Devil In The Chain<\/em>?) is first-rate. But as a rule writers from that area of the world suffer from the unfortunate tic of much African fiction: an unwavering focus on local custom and history, a backwards glance fixed upon the miseries of colonization, a sort of literary nationalism that speaks to fellow nationals but not to the world.<\/p>\nAmoah\u2014while clearly a Ghanaian patriot\u2014seems to have shaken off such narrow localism completely. He celebrates Ghana, to be sure, but he writes as a citizen of the world. I would not be surprised at all if someone reading Chaotic Butterfly<\/em> thought the author British, or Swiss, or American, or even a Chinese expatriate. He could pass for all these things, yet he is none of these things: Amoah is a man and writer of the age of globalization. He modulates through cultures like a pianist moving from one key to the next. But he hasn\u2019t forgotten the cost, either: the nostalgia of his characters for the vanished sense of home lilts through each.<\/p>\nIf we may consider him a Ghanian novelist for the moment, however, then literature in that country has taken a major step forward. There are worthy writers from that country to be sure, but the autobiographical slices-of-life that pass for African fiction generally, are nothing like the international scope of Chaotic Butterfly<\/em>. Amoah is and is not a Ghanaian novelist, is and is not a European novelist, is and is not a British novelist. Yet I have no doubt that he has entered the ranks of notable Ghanian writers with this book, and that as a Ghanaian novelist, he\u2019s broken through the limits of its localism completely, and opened the scope of the Ghanaian novel to incorporate the entire world.<\/p>\nAnother complete surprise: the Chinese emphasis. I figured a Ghanaian writer living in Europe would write about Ghana and Europe. Reasonable, no? Yet Amoah has a strong focus on China throughout, and he seems to understand it from the most intricate of its supply chain challenges, to the horror of the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s roots in Maoist genocide, to the whiff of Taoism in its foreign policy, to the metaphysical metaphors of its board games, to the impact of Christianity on its political future.<\/p>\n
How many \u2018pulse-pounding thrillers,\u2019 how many Western novels of any<\/em> sort being written today, even touch on these matters? Is this Amoah the business analyst seeing the looming rise of Chinese influence and addressing its nature and impact because of its sheer importance? I don\u2019t know. I also don\u2019t know if the Chinese leadership are reading this book. They should be.<\/p>\nBut enough. All right, I\u2019m raving. What can I say? Normally I read cheesy rot about space ships and robots and crawling mutant slime. Chaotic Butterfly<\/em> proved a breath of fresh air. I love this book for that alone. But more than that: I respect it. I don\u2019t know whether the reader smart enough to buy a copy will love it as much, or get quite as much of a kick, but I do know they will enjoy it. Bullets fly, planes crash, crises and cliffhangers abound, as does frequent wit, scenes that will make the reader laugh outright, and (not least) Amoah\u2019s wonderful gift for words. One has but to quote. Consider his his description of his two principal investigators:<\/p>\n<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cDuvalier had the looks, physique and mindset of filmdom\u2019s next James Bond. A John Barry soundtrack seemed subliminally to accompany him. By contrast, O. O. had a face that was a cross between a large dyspeptic frog and a somewhat molten Winston Churchill.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/em><\/p>\nOr:<\/em><\/p>\n<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cNot for Siggi the tram, or a common Uber. As he watched mobs of sorry untermenschen flock over the streets to their jobs and clerkships, he thanked the gods\u2014the Greek gods, of course\u2014at the thought of how superior his life was to his fellow men, if indeed he could refer to the grey-suited drones shuffling along the streets as that. To Siggi they seemed dour overcoated cattle trying not to slip on the assiduously reluctant patch of ice that never seemed to entirely leave the streets.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cAs his taxi passed the beating heart of Zurich, the Union Bank of Switzerland, Siggi noted protestors milling outside the edifice waving signs. \u201cHitler\u2019s Bankers\u201d announced one. He noted the ragged jeans of the protestors with disdain.<\/em>
<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cPeasants. At least the Nazis had fashion sense!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Or:<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cYoung Cioran\u2019s eyes were piercingly intense, blue as diamond; his body was cadaverous, his hair close-cropped. His sharp features were a strange mixture of Hawking and Auschwitz.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/em><\/p>\nOr:<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cFor a moment all his businesses, all his investments, all his financial instruments broke across his intellect as a single unified whole. The complexity of economic trends, rising inflation, falling rates of interest, derivatives, loans, portfolios, all took on a sudden luminous clarity, as though he were looking into the complex ellipses of an atomic particle, or a solar system. He felt like a brilliant chess prodigy suddenly seeing beyond individual moves and standardized openings into the game itself, into what it was to be a master of the game\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nThe lines sing. Yet this book is so well written that the writing is not the focus. If you want to know how chocolate production operates, read Devil In The Chain<\/em>. If you want to know how the world<\/em> operates, read Chaotic Butterfly.<\/em> Yes, it\u2019s an uneven work in some ways\u2014not the work of a writer who has (yet) reached his full measure.<\/p>\nBut that\u2019s what I found amazing and even inspiring about it\u2014the sense that this is a writer who will grow<\/em>, a writer of profound ambition grappling with no less profound aspects of the world we live in today. Genre fiction is soon forgotten, but in Chaotic Butterfly<\/em> James Amoah is admirably striving for something more; something that will not just inform and entertain, but enlighten, and that may live.<\/p>\nIs he equal to understanding our strange, recklessly evolving world? Ah, who is? But Mr. Amoah is trying, and trying to the limits of his remarkable and considerable abilities. I certainly look forward to the works that will follow.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_contact_form captcha=”off” email=”cwtrafford@gmail.com” title=”Email Colin” admin_label=”Contact Form” _builder_version=”3.0.87″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_contact_field field_id=”Name” field_title=”Name” _builder_version=”3.16″ global_colors_info=”{}” button_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off”][\/et_pb_contact_field][et_pb_contact_field field_id=”Email” field_title=”Email Address” field_type=”email” _builder_version=”3.16″ global_colors_info=”{}” button_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off”][\/et_pb_contact_field][et_pb_contact_field field_id=”Message” field_title=”Message” field_type=”text” fullwidth_field=”on” _builder_version=”3.16″ global_colors_info=”{}” button_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off”][\/et_pb_contact_field][\/et_pb_contact_form][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
James Amoah’s Chaotic Butterfly: A Major Novelist EmergesA few days ago someone I know in publishing sent me a copy of a book and asked me to have a look at it. It was called Chaotic Butterfly by a writer I had never heard of called James Amoah. Could I review it? I smiled. As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"[et_pb_section admin_label=\"section\"][et_pb_row admin_label=\"row\"][et_pb_column type=\"4_4\"][et_pb_text admin_label=\"Text\" background_layout=\"light\" text_orientation=\"left\" use_border_color=\"off\" border_color=\"#ffffff\" border_style=\"solid\"]\n\nJames Amoah's Chaotic Butterfly: A Major Novelist Emerges\n\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=\"row\"][et_pb_column type=\"1_4\"][et_pb_image admin_label=\"Image\" src=\"http:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/wp-content\/uploads\/10_Cloverfield_Lane.png\" show_in_lightbox=\"off\" url_new_window=\"off\" animation=\"left\" sticky=\"off\" use_overlay=\"off\" align=\"left\" force_fullwidth=\"off\" always_center_on_mobile=\"on\" use_border_color=\"off\" border_color=\"#ffffff\" border_style=\"solid\"]\n[\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=\"1_2\"][et_pb_text admin_label=\"Text\" background_layout=\"light\" text_orientation=\"left\" use_border_color=\"off\" border_color=\"#ffffff\" border_style=\"solid\"]\n\nJames Amoah\u2019s Chaotic Butterfly: A Major Novelist Emerges\n\nA few days ago someone I know in publishing sent me a copy of a book and asked me to have a look at it. It was called Chaotic Butterfly by a writer I had never heard of called James Amoah. Could I review it? I smiled. As readers know, I am not a kind reviewer. I like to beat bad books half to death, and, let\u2019s face it, most books nowadays are bad. Also, I generally focus on science fiction, a field that has more bad books than CIA poppy fields have poppies. The book in question was not SF, it seemed, but really, so what? Any victim will do when one is in a crabby enough mood, and I had not yet had my morning coffee.\nSo I got out my truncheon, all prepared to flip through its pages and break its bones with maximum savagery; and\u2014to my shock\u2014I was more intrigued and impressed by this book than by anything I\u2019ve read in a good long while. In fact, I was so intrigued that I bought the first book in what appears to be the trilogy\u2014Devil In The Chain. Which left me even more impressed, this time with the author.\nDevil In The Chain is not on a par with Chaotic Butterfly. But what struck me about that first book was its simple competence. The book was brisk, clever, cleanly written, fast-moving and surprisingly informative. Apparently Mr. Amoah is a supply chain consultant and trainer based in Europe, and the book traced literally every step in the production of chocolate, from its starting point as a seed planted in African fields through its harvesting and shipping and eventual factory processing offshore to its distribution to chocolate shops.\n\u201cWho cares?\u201d you may say. And I suppose most readers may not care. I don\u2019t! Chocolate production documentaries excite neither me nor the best seller lists.\nBut I am giving a very poor description of the book if I reduce it to that.\nAround the timeline of the way the a piece of chocolate is made and taken to market, Mr. Amoah built a quite ingenious thriller, rich in car chases, international settings, sorely challenged heroes and heroines, a disfigured crime lord as its maniacal villain, and a mystery that remained unresolved till the surprise ending.\nThe prose read like a British mystery, and I was delighted to see Mr. Amoah excel in two items rarely seen in fiction anymore: genuinely good and decent protagonists, and a happy ending. I liked the people I read about, and I was happy to see things turn out well for them. Only a very good writer can get away with that. Anti-heroes, navel-gazing inverts, and mandatory politically correct stick figures mostly fill fiction today. Mr. Amoah\u2019s good guys did not even preach: he let the goodness of his people spoke for itself. They made me feel rather good, and the happy ending left me feeling rather happy. Wow, I had actually enjoyed myself, and even learned a little something. Not my usual reading experience.\nBut though I enjoyed Devil In The Chain, and recommend it, I was not that taken with it as a writer. Yes, it was well written, well structured, entertaining and all that. I came away knowing a good deal more about supply chains and how chocolates are made. But it wasn\u2019t Proust. It wasn\u2019t Kafka. It was competently done genre fiction\u2014fun, but not a serious capital-N Novel novel addressing deep themes, the woeful human heart, internally conflicted characters, the clash of civilizations, God, Meaning, The Way We Live Now.\nMind you, had I read that book first, and learned that Mr. Amoah had written a sequel, I\u2019d have picked it right up, expecting another quick bit of fun. Fun is good. But anyone who approaches Chaotic Butterfly with that shallow expectation will be dumbfounded. Mr. Amoah seems to have taken the light elements of his first book and raised them exponentially in the second, lifting it to the brink of true fiction. I say \u2018the brink\u2019 because Amoah has kept all the elements and more that kept readers on the edge of their seats in the first\u2014the car chases and criminal mafiosi and international spies, the murder mysteries and assiduous cops and cliffhanger twists and turns and spectacular explosions.\nYet, for all that, Chaotic Butterfly is the work of a novelist, a person of scope and depth presenting evolving characters in a world of equal scope and depth. Amoah is no longer playing a friendly game of checkers with the reader. He\u2019s playing high-level chess now; and chess for blood.\nThe impressive thing about the book\u2014one of several impressive things\u2014is that Amoah managed to build it all on the previous simple structure. The Anan family, the protagonists of Devil In The Chain, are still there leading the story, but now the single-minded supply-chain-obsessed Johanna is in charge, and finds market share dropping, criminal influence threatening, and financial complexity and innovation stripping control from her hands. We see Jacob, a callow adolescent in Book One, growing from existential uncertainty into the adulthood of a committed, mature love. Benjamin Anan, almost more adolescent than Jacob at the beginning of the new book, evolves into something hard and lonely by book\u2019s end, powerful and wealthy but swelling in anger and destructive force.\nA not dissimilar arc is followed by his father, Michael Anan, who passes from being an irresponsible party animal at the start of the book to an older, emotionally scarred political activist by its end. A sadder arc is traced by Edward Warped, passing from incarceration and homelessness to overnight wealth and fame only to sink back into madness.\nThis is one of the marks of genuine fiction: living characters that grow, rather than stock characters that persist as fixed quantities.\nAmoah continues to excel at creating characters who are simply good\u2014the care-giving Naomi Anan, for instance, or Edward\u2019s handmaiden Capucine Ember. He also paints characters who are unqualifiedly evil, though far from being cartoons\u2014Kwaku, the villain from Devil who returns with a flamboyant vengeance, or the deranged former child soldier and cult leader Kevin.\nBut while the characters in Chaotic Butterfly are anything but grey, he now deplores them to explore ethical areas that are. The Chinese agent Robert Clark, the upper-class charmer Philip Ellbourne, the highly ambiguous Maddok Rott-Charlus, coldly shaping a better world behind the EU curtains\u2014are these people good or evil? I honestly don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t know that they know, but I know that their uncomfortable ambiguity is riveting. I was especially taken by Robert Clark, whom Amoah follows from a starveling child in the exterminatory work fields of the Cultural Revolution to the very peak of Chinese political hierarchy, dealing brisk terror without hesitation yet all the while haunted by the legacy of a residual Christianity left by his missionary foster parents.\nChaotic Butterfly, like Devil, is didactic: again Amoah wants to show us the operations of the supply chain, but he isn\u2019t as heavy-handed about it as in the first novel. That one traced a single business process prosaically, but in Chaotic Butterfly, Amoah has jumped from analyst to humanist: he traces a product\u2019s supply chain be tracing the social and emotional background enabling it. He also shows us the supply evolving, developing and changing under the impact of new technological developments. Chaotic Butterfly, like its predecessor, shows the reader how things get done, but now his subject is not so much a relatively simple specific business process but the highly complex social process through which all such lesser processes move and change.\nAnd as Amoah presents it, it moves in striking, dramatic ways. Innovation in production can stem from the near-mad (Edward), it can be driven by and at the same time crippled by greed (Jean-Claude) or doltish accident (d\u2019Oven) or behind-the-scenes interference (Rott-Charlus), or it can be accelerated by shallow but vital recklessness (Benjamin). Progress is made, but not without struggle, or the constant presence of the accidental and unexpected. If one supply chain process was a central theme of Devil, the way in which human pressures and technical innovations distort and transform\u2014and elevate!\u2014supply chains is the theme of Butterfly.\nYet somehow Amoah manages to transmute these corporate conflicts into real drama. I certainly did not expect to be moved by seeing a businesswomen grappling with the impact of blockchain on her business, but I was: Amoah manages to bring out the human and social implications of these processes, and the result is both moving as fiction and illuminating as non-fiction.\nChaotic Butterfly is not a collection of business speeches mouthed by cartoon characters along the lines of Goldratt\u2019s The Goal, however. It is absolutely fascinating to see the way it approaches literature, without ever quite giving up its grip on supply chain and genre requirements. On that last criteria, it overdelivers. Butterfly opens vividly with the spectacular crime scene mandatory for a thriller. A swift turn to the Anans finds Jacob in jail, and CEO Johanna selecting one Mary Cloutie\u2014apparently a spy controlled by the Chinese agent Robert Clark\u2014to head up marketing. Jo then learns that her brother Benjamin has sold the family business out from under her (provisionally) so as to finance a business venture involving the blockchain that could revolutionize all business as such. They bicker furiously, but the new innovation is installed. Unknown to either, however, the developer intends to use the new innovation to launch a conscious AI designed to wipe out as much of the mankind he despises as possible. Meanwhile the shadowy Clark learns of Russian monitoring of a Chinese biowarfare installation. He destroys both the Russians and the Chinese involved, but regrettably their destruction unleashes a fatal bioweapon that destroys an entire American town. America blames Russia. Thermonuclear war is in the air. And if it doesn\u2019t? No problem: there\u2019s a rogue Chinese eugenics project threatening to wipe out all mankind too. Oh, and did I mention that Kwaku, the missing Ghanaian crime lord, pops up to obliterate the entire Russian Mafia in continental Europe, while a cult deifies him?\nSpeaking as a writer, it is borderline amazing to me that Amoah could have constructed this wild and apocalyptic a set of plot elements, constantly ratcheting up the stakes, and yet filled these looming cataclysms with touching family scenes, moving notes of unrequited love, cutting-edge international business concerns, detailed discussions of blockchain and Chinese supply chain prospects, and\u2014well, suffice it to say, this is my main judgment on Chaotic Butterfly: it is an astonishingly ambitious book. Amoah is stretching himself admirably: he is trying to grasp the world as a whole, and to see more deeply into the heart of his characters at the same time; all this through the lens of a business process, supply chain, that is holding it all together even as it changes under our eyes. Honestly, he seems to have leapt from being a more than decent mystery novelist to one of the most serious writers currently taking up the pen\u2014but without jettisoning any the thriller elements that contain and drive it all. If anything he\u2019s amped them up!\nI would be lying if I said Chaotic Butterfly is flawless. Any such book would inevitably be long, but there are business discussions and scenes that could do with some compression. It would benefit from additional editing. Additional proofreading, too. I look forward to a tighter second edition.\nYet at the same time, when I finished the book, I was sorry: a part of me wished it were longer. From blockchain, to sentient AI, to internal Chinese Communist politics, to globalized crime, to tips on wei chi, to the question of who really runs the EU, to the beginnings of religions, to Hermes\u2019 wide selection of scarves (!), Amoah touches on so many intriguing subjects that you wish he could dwell on them more. Possibly it\u2019s because of his global supply chain background: he seems to be able to grasp our modern world as a whole as it careens forward into\u2014what? Amoah makes us wonder, and that is one of the great attractions and weaknesses of the book. He tries so hard to say so much that the book points beyond itself: it seems to want to burst its covers.\nWriters read books differently than the public reads books. We read competitively, looking for skillful performances from which we can learn, and I have to confess: it\u2019s as a writer that I was most taken by much of this book. Amoah approaches his craft not just with skill but with a kind of quirky cunning. He makes such interesting decisions. For instance, though he has a gift for language, he provides surprisingly little in terms of description and locale. (I think he feels that television and Internet make it unnecessary to describe a Paris street or Swiss cafe anymore.)\nAlso impressive: his masterly counterpoint. These are long story lines and long speeches in this long book, but Amoah has a positive genius for intercutting. The reader hops from scene to scene in bite-size chunks briskly ripped from its many crises. The technique raises new mysteries as quickly it resolves old ones and the story flies forward. In a book marked by long and serious discussions, things rarely seem to drag, because the author is canny enough to pull away briefly to a vertiginous threat, and then\u2014at the point of its maximum tension\u2014pull back to the earlier discourse.\nYes, the reader\u2019s teeth grind\u2014what happens after the heroine is thrown out the skyscraper window, James?\nHang on, reader, you\u2019ll find out. But first a page on blockchain interfaces.\nThis reader cursed the author aloud. But also zipped through the intervening pages to learn what happened.\n(A warning to readers: I cursed Amoah aloud repeatedly for ending the book on the same trick. That last line! I wanted to throttle the author. Now I have to wait till Book Three comes out? Tell me what happened next right now, Amoah! It\u2019s the sort of writerly trick that has the reader salivating to buy the next book, and, curse him, it works.)\nAmoah has other felicities: he eschews gore and porn, for which I pat him on the back. The book is refreshingly non-American. I barely noticed it while reading, but I can\u2019t recall a single Yank. I was pleasantly surprised too to realize that race is not especially emphasized at all, not in either book. Amoah\u2019s people are people first and stereotypes not at all: he seems willing to allow the reader to fill in the colors as they choose, if they choose, but he himself focuses on their intellectual and ethical character: the flavor of their minds and souls, not the color of their bodies. Though an African novelist from a continent and people much scarred by racism, his world is curiously and almost casually post-racist. I was reminded, strangely, of Star Trek: \u2018All that nonsense is a thing of the past,\u2019 his books seem to say. \u2018We don\u2019t bother with it.\u2019 Would that it the world agreed.\nBut is he an African novelist? I have a taste for non-Western literature, and there are not a few fine Ghanaian writers. I quite like the Ghanaian detective fiction of Kwei Quartey (an possible influence on Devil In The Chain?). The self-centered fiction of Yaa Gyaasi, not so much. But both suffer from the unfortunate tic of much African fiction: an unwavering focus on local custom and history, a backwards glance fixed upon the miseries of colonization, a sort of literary nationalism that speaks to fellow nationals but not to the world.\nAmoah\u2014clearly a Ghanaian patriot\u2014seems to have shaken off such narrow localism completely. He celebrates Ghana, to be sure, but he writes as a citizen of the world. I would not be surprised at all if someone reading Chaotic Butterfly thought the author British, or Swiss, or American, or even a Chinese expatriate. He could pass for all these things yet he is none of these things: Amoah is a man and writer of the age of globalization. He modulates through cultures like a pianist moving from one key to the next. But he hasn\u2019t forgotten the cost, either: the nostalgia of his characters for the vanished sense of home lilts through each.\nIf we may consider him a Ghanian novelist for the moment, however, then literature in that country has taken a major step forward. There are worthy writers from that country to be sure (I have to mention again the delightful mysteries of Kwei Quartey), but the autobiographical slices-of-life that pass for African fiction generally, are nothing like the international scope of Chaotic Butterfly. Amoah is and is not a Ghanaian novelist, is and is not a European novelist, is and is not a British novelist. Yet I have no doubt that he has entered the ranks of notable Ghanian writers with this book, and that as a Ghanaian novelist, he\u2019s broken through the limits of its localism completely, and opened the scope of the Ghanaian novel to incorporate the entire world.\nAnother complete surprise: the Chinese emphasis. I figured a Ghanaian writer living in Europe would write about Ghana and Europe. Reasonable, no? Yet Amoah has a strong focus on China throughout, and he seems to understand it from the most intricate of its supply chain challenges to the horror of the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s roots in Maoist genocide to the whiff of Taoism in its foreign policy to the metaphysical metaphors of its board games to the impact of Christianity on its political future. How many \u2018pulse-pounding thrillers,\u2019 how many Western novels of any sort being written today, even touch on these matters? Is this Amoah the business analyst seeing the looming rise of Chinese influence and addressing its nature and impact because of its sheer importance? I don\u2019t know. I also don\u2019t know if the Chinese leadership are reading this book. They should be.\nBut enough. All right, all right, I\u2019m raving. What can I say? Normally I read cheesy rot about space ships and robots and crawling mutant slime. Chaotic Butterfly proved a breath of fresh air. I love this book for that alone. But more: I respect it. I don\u2019t know whether the reader smart enough to buy a copy will love it as much, or get quite as much of a kick, but I do know they will enjoy it. Bullets fly, planes crash, crises and cliffhangers abound, as does frequent wit, scenes that will make the reader laugh outright, and (not least) Amoah\u2019s wonderful gift for words. One has but to quote:\n\n\u201cDuvalier had the looks, physique and mindset of filmdom\u2019s next James Bond. A John Barry soundtrack seemed subliminally to accompany him. By contrast, O. O. had a face that was a cross between a large dyspeptic frog and a somewhat molten Winston Churchill.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot for Siggi the tram, or a common Uber. As he watched mobs of sorry untermenschen flock over the streets to their jobs and clerkships, he thanked the gods\u2014the Greek gods, of course\u2014at the thought of how superior his life was to his fellow men, if indeed he could refer to the grey-suited drones shuffling along the streets as that. To Siggi they seemed dour overcoated cattle trying not to slip on the assiduously reluctant patch of ice that never seemed to entirely leave the streets.\n\u201cAs his taxi passed the beating heart of Zurich, the Union Bank of Switzerland, Siggi noted protestors milling outside the edifice waving signs. \u201cHitler\u2019s Bankers\u201d announced one. He noted the ragged jeans of the protestors with disdain.\n\u201cPeasants. At least the Nazis had fashion sense!\u201d\n\n\u201cYoung Cioran\u2019s eyes were piercingly intense, blue as diamond; his body was cadaverous, his hair close-cropped. His sharp features were a strange mixture of Hawking and Auschwitz.\n\n\u201cFor a moment all his businesses, all his investments, all his financial instruments broke across his intellect as a single unified whole. The complexity of economic trends, rising inflation, falling rates of interest, derivatives, loans, portfolios, all took on a sudden luminous clarity, as though he were looking into the complex ellipses of an atomic particle, or a solar system. He felt like a brilliant chess prodigy suddenly seeing beyond individual moves and standardized openings into the game itself, into what it was to be a master of the game\u201d\n\nThe lines sing. Yet this book is so well written that the writing is not the focus. If you want to know how chocolate production operates, read Devil In The Chain. If you want to know how the world operates, read Chaotic Butterfly. Yes, it\u2019s an uneven work in some ways\u2014not the work of a writer who has (yet) reached his full measure. But that\u2019s what I found exciting about it\u2014the sense that this is a writer who will grow, a writer of profound ambition grappling with no less profound aspects of the world we live in today. Genre fiction is soon forgotten, but in Chaotic Butterfly James Amoah is clearly striving for something higher, something more; something that will enlighten, and that may live.\nIs he equal to understanding our strange, recklessly evolving world? Ah, who is? But Mr. Amoah is trying, and trying to the limits of his remarkable and considerable abilities. I certainly look forward to the works that will follow.\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=\"1_4\"][et_pb_contact_form admin_label=\"Contact Form\" captcha=\"off\" email=\"cwtrafford@gmail.com\" title=\"Email Colin\"]\n[\/et_pb_contact_form][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-415","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n
James Amoah's Chaotic Butterfly: A Major Novelist Emerges - Science Fiction Today With Colin Trafford<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"James Amoah's Chaotic Butterfly: A Major Novelist Emerges - Science Fiction Today With Colin Trafford\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"James Amoah's Chaotic Butterfly: A Major Novelist EmergesA few days ago someone I know in publishing sent me a copy of a book and asked me to have a look at it. It was called Chaotic Butterfly by a writer I had never heard of called James Amoah. Could I review it? I smiled. As […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Science Fiction Today With Colin Trafford\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-10-11T12:09:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"16 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pascaleditions.com\\\/colintrafford\\\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pascaleditions.com\\\/colintrafford\\\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\\\/\",\"name\":\"James Amoah's Chaotic Butterfly: A Major Novelist Emerges - Science Fiction Today With Colin Trafford\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pascaleditions.com\\\/colintrafford\\\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2021-10-09T19:28:09+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-10-11T12:09:31+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pascaleditions.com\\\/colintrafford\\\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/pascaleditions.com\\\/colintrafford\\\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pascaleditions.com\\\/colintrafford\\\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pascaleditions.com\\\/colintrafford\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"James Amoah’s Chaotic Butterfly: A Major Novelist Emerges\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pascaleditions.com\\\/colintrafford\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pascaleditions.com\\\/colintrafford\\\/\",\"name\":\"Science Fiction Today With Colin Trafford\",\"description\":\"Science Fiction and Commentary from SF Writer Colin Trafford\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pascaleditions.com\\\/colintrafford\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"James Amoah's Chaotic Butterfly: A Major Novelist Emerges - Science Fiction Today With Colin Trafford","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"James Amoah's Chaotic Butterfly: A Major Novelist Emerges - Science Fiction Today With Colin Trafford","og_description":"James Amoah's Chaotic Butterfly: A Major Novelist EmergesA few days ago someone I know in publishing sent me a copy of a book and asked me to have a look at it. It was called Chaotic Butterfly by a writer I had never heard of called James Amoah. Could I review it? I smiled. As […]","og_url":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\/","og_site_name":"Science Fiction Today With Colin Trafford","article_modified_time":"2021-10-11T12:09:31+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"16 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\/","url":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\/","name":"James Amoah's Chaotic Butterfly: A Major Novelist Emerges - Science Fiction Today With Colin Trafford","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/#website"},"datePublished":"2021-10-09T19:28:09+00:00","dateModified":"2021-10-11T12:09:31+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/james-amoahs-chaotic-butterfly-a-major-novelist-emerges\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"James Amoah’s Chaotic Butterfly: A Major Novelist Emerges"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/#website","url":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/","name":"Science Fiction Today With Colin Trafford","description":"Science Fiction and Commentary from SF Writer Colin Trafford","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":461,"href":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/415\/revisions\/461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pascaleditions.com\/colintrafford\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}