Ben East Books

Tag: Ghana

  • Jimmy Carter

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    Ben East
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    I met him in Accra when the Carter Center visited Ghana for an update on its Guinea Worm eradication program. He was humble, polite, and eager to hear from the embassy briefers.

  • Eggnog Around the World

    Eggnog Around the World

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    Ben East
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    The first year I cooked eggnog, the result was a combination of lumps and slime. Not even the high-proof white lightening we poured in–the Malawian jungle juice known as Powers No 1–could cure the stuff. We were Peace Corps Volunteers celebrating Christmas in the back of beyond. We had most of the right ingredients, fresh…

  • White Chapel, Black Hole

    White Chapel, Black Hole

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    Ben East
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    Human excrement paves the dungeon floors at Cape Coast Castle. The same is true of other slave forts dotting Ghana’s coast, and along the rest of West Africa. The impacted waste is one of the more subtle, more stirring features of a tour through those high limestone walls. The cannons are there and stacks of…

  • One Dead Cop: the Wattpad Experiment

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    Ben East
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    My Wattpad experiment comes to an end. I’ll publish my conclusions next week. For now, here is the rest of One Dead Cop. Pick up where you left off below, or read from Part I. 4 Palm Massacre Darko’s voice comes hushed and urgent over the phone. I have something for you. An accident? Fitch…

  • Dundee International Book Prize

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    Ben East
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    Two weeks until the February 15th deadline for submitting your manuscript to this year’s Dundee International Book Prize. Curious about what floats their boat? Read last year’s shortlisted works: My manuscript Sea Never Dry, thick with crooked cops, fetish priests, Internet fraudsters, and orphans turning a buck off a West African e-waste dump, made last year’s cut. Read the excerpt below. Now,…

  • Shortlisted for International Book Prize

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    Ben East
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    The Dundee International Book Prize announced their short list for 2014.  Sea Never Dry, my novel about dirty cops and drug trafficking in West Africa, made the list.  Thick with spies and fetish priests, Internet fraudsters and the Ghanaian orphans turning a buck on Accra’s e-waste ash heaps, Sea Never Dry centers on the conflict between Western development efforts and…