Kwame Nkrumah's Quest for Restoration - by Tunde Adeleke (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book challenges existing and popular understandings of Kwame Nkrumah's ideas and struggles.

Book Synopsis

Examining Kwame Nkrumah's time in exile, Tunde Adeleke challenges existing and popular understandings of Nkrumah's ideas and struggles.

In Kwame Nkrumah's Quest for Restoration: Nkrumaism and Pan-Africanism in Exile Tunde Adeleke examines Kwame Nkrumah's life and the six years he spent in exile in Conakry, Guinea, exploring the extraordinary efforts and resources he invested on attempts to return and regain political power. Adeleke contends that Nkrumah's overthrow and exile compelled him to reimagine, revise, and fundamentally alter the essence of Pan-Africanism. This book shows how Nkurmah spearheaded the Pan-Africanist movement for greater continental unification, deviating from some of the essential values and principles of Pan-Africanism. His time in exile exposed a personality in sharp contrast to the consummate Pan-Africanist memorialized in Black Nationalist discourses. Through textual analysis of Nkrumah's letters and political writings, Adeleke argues that Nkrumah's fundamental change and redirection on Pan-Africanism not only shaped the movement's new purpose but also impacted Ghana.

Review Quotes

Tunde Adeleke has written a book that is sure to advance Kwame Nkrumah scholarship. Anchored on a meticulous study of Nkrumah's exilic writings framed by his overly optimistic faith in his return to Ghana's presidency and a radical change to his Pan-Africanism marked increasingly by a penchant for authoritarianism, this book is written with nuance, authority, verve, and sophistication. It performs the rare task of writing about a leading African thinker's complexity and the evolution of his thinking over time. Nkrumah scholarship will never be the same again.
Olu´fe´mi Ta´i´wo`, Professor of Africana Studies, Cornell University, USA

Tunde Adeleke has written a timely, must-read book about Kwame Nkrumah, the founder and first prime minister of Ghana and 'father of African nationalism, ' and his final years living in exile in Conakry, Guinea, following his overthrow by a military coup in 1966. Through cogent analysis and lyrical prose, Adeleke charts Nkrumah's epic struggle to return to Ghana, regain political power, and restore a revolutionary pan-Africanism until his death in 1972.
Erik S. McDuffie, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

About the Author

Tunde Adeleke is Professor of History and the African & African American Studies Program at Iowa State University, USA.