"
Catch Me if You Can
meets
Coming to America
in this epic tale of one of the greatest scammers of all time."-NPR
Shortlisted for the Mark Lynton History Prize
*
A
New York Times
Notable Book of the Year * A
New Yorker
, NPR,
Newsweek
,
The Economist,
TIME,
Slate,
and WIRED Best Book of the Year
The astounding, never-before-told story of how an audacious Ghanaian con artist pulled off one of the 20th century's longest-running and most spectacular frauds.
After winning independence in 1957, Ghana instantly became a target for home-grown opportunists and rapacious Western interests determined to snatch any assets that British colonialism hadn't already stripped. A CIA-funded military junta ousted the inspiring president, Kwame Nkrumah, then falsely accused him of hiding the country's gold overseas.
Into this big lie stepped one of history's most charismatic scammers, a con man to rival the trickster god Anansi. Born into poverty in Ghana and trained in the United States, John Ackah Blay-Miezah declared himself custodian of an alleged Nkrumah trust fund worth billions. You, too, could claim a piece--if only you would “invest” in Blay-Miezah's fictitious efforts to release the equally fictitious fund. Over the 1970s and '80s, he and his accomplices-including Ghanaian state officials and Nixon's former attorney general--scammed hundreds of millions of dollars out of thousands of believers around the world. American prosecutors called his scam “one of the most fascinating--and lucrative--in modern history.”
In
Anansi's Gold
, Yepoka Yeebo chases Blay-Miezah's wild trail and discovers, at long last, what really happened to Ghana's missing wealth. She unfolds a riveting account of Cold War entanglements, international finance, and postcolonial betrayal, revealing how what we call “history” writes itself into being, one lie at a time.
Winner of the Jhalak Prize * Winner of the Plutarch Award for Biography *
Finalist for the 2024 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award in Historical Nonfiction