Book Review Series#5: Faceless by Amma Darko

“It was fairly illuminated inside the wooden shack because the door was never shut.
It had no windows and they would all sweat and suffocate to death if the door was ever shut. Paying two hundred cedis a day each to the owner, it was what they could afford. There were the regulars like herself and until a week ago, Fofo. The owner was never short of his daily tenants. Boys and girls slept together, stripped together and did things with each other, many
times under the influence of alcohol, wholly unconscious of what they were doing or with whom. Such was the evil of life on the streets".

“Faceless" by Amma Darko centres on the life of Fofo, a fourteen-year-old girl who is forced into the life of the streets as a result of the negligence of her parents. The novel is wired around the mysterious death of Baby T, Fofo's older sister. As the plot of the novel develops, mysteries about the death of Baby T are uncovered. The story begins with a rather emotional scene in which Fofo is almost raped by Poison, a street lord in Sodom and Gomorrah, a section of Accra's inner city which is occupied by delinquents.
However, Fofo meets Kabria, an agent of MUTE. MUTE is an NGO that seeks to oversee the rehabilitation of street children. Fofo's life experiences a turn around as a result of her meeting with Kabria. The themes of prostitution, feminism, betrayal, rape and parental irresponsibility are inherent in the story.
Through the novel, Darko vividly shows the life in the slums of Ghana, and Africa as a whole. The realities of prostitution and murder on the streets of Africa are brought into the light.

“Faceless" by Amma Darko is an evergreen novel.