The Great Encounter is a novel that captures the early centuries of European engagement in Africa. Paa Mannoh takes snippets of history, introspection into the mannerism of fishermen of the territory that used to be called the Gold Coast, the Europeans' manner of engagement with Africans, then and present, and comes out with a classic novel.
The story is told with the backdrop of the life of Esi Atta, later Latinized Isabellita Hermona, a nine year old girl of Elmina--the foremost European settlement on the Gold Coast in the fifteenth century. Esi's courage saved the lives of a crew of Spanish adventures who trespassed to trade on the Guinea coast that was the official territory of Portugal. These were times that the papal bull forbade any other European Christian nation from trading on the God-given territory of another. These were times too that European nations, tempted by the huge profits in slave trade and piracy, aligned with local chiefs and engaged in the crudest warfare among mankind.
In gratitude, Esi is put aboard a ship to Spain. She gets the opportunity of having the best education any contemporary Spanish young lady could be privileged to have, and spends an eventful four decades in Europe in an era of tremendous rapid change. Esi returns, but Gold Coast too is undergoing a period of social and tribal adjustment and cultural change.
Would the sophistication she had acquired make her capable of adjusting to the African society?
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