Tail Of The Blue Bird

'A delightful book that combines the basic tug of the whodunit with the more elegant pleasures of the literary novel' Independent

Sonokrom, a village in the Ghanaian hinterland, has not changed for hundreds of years. Here, the men and women speak the language of the forest, drink aphrodisiacs with their palm wine and walk alongside the spirits of their ancestors. The discovery of sinister remains - possibly human, definitely 'evil' - and the disappearance of a local man brings the intrusion of the city in the form of Kayo, a young forensic pathologist convinced that scientific logic can shatter even the most inexplicable of mysteries.

As old and new worlds clash and clasp, and Kayo and his sidekick, Constable Garba, delve deeper into the case, they discover a truth that leaves scientific explanations far behind.

Review: A delightful book that combines the basic tug of the whodunit with the more elegant pleasures of the literary novel * Independent *
A lyrically beautiful tale * Arise *
A deeply complex novel; each character, every line entices the reader into feeling the beating heart of urban and rural Ghanaian lives... Parkes' steady, assured writing weaves a cosmological mystery that keeps you guessing to the very last page * Courttia Newland *
A brilliant new voice * Time Out *
A magical and engaging read -- Margaret Busby

Author Biography: Born in the UK in 1974 and raised in Ghana, Nii Parkes lives in Manchester. He has performed poetry in the UK, Europe, Ghana and the US and was a 2005 Associate Artist-in-Residence with BBC Radio 3. In 2007 he was writer-in-residence at California State University, and became one of the youngest living writers to be featured in the Poems on the Underground programme in London for his poem Tin Roof. Tail of the Bluebird is his first novel.