The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi

Kwasi Boachi in 1900

The novel purports to be a memoir written in 1900 by Kwasi Boachi,[1] one of two Ashanti princes taken from their homeland to the Netherlands in 1837 to receive a Christian education. It is mostly based on historical fact, and set partly in the nineteenth-century Dutch Gold Coast. Kwasi and his fellow Ashanti prince Kwame Poku are pestered at their school in Delft and attract a measure of attention from the royal court, which views the boys as curiosities and, while favoring them for the while, fails to offer them continued support. Kwasi and Kwame grow apart; Kwasi chooses to assimilate himself into Dutch culture and deny his African background, while Kwame is unable to adapt to his new environment. He returns to Africa, but finds himself an outcast there as he has by now forgotten his native language; no longer accepted by his own people, whom he never sees again. Almost three years are spent waiting in Fort Elmina for permission to return to his people while he slowly appears to sink into delusion, then commits suicide. Meanwhile, Kwasi attempts to seek his fortune in the Dutch East Indies but fails, owing in part to the prevalence of racism and a personal grudge held by one of his former classmates, who is his superior in the East Indies.[2]

The book is based in part on Japin's own traumatic youth, and in part on historical research—Japin spent ten years researching the novel, a postcolonial exposé of the (short-lived) expansion of the Dutch colonial empire into West-Africa.[3][4] The novel's action takes place in Africa, Weimar, and the Netherlands.

During his research, Japin came across the story of Badu Bonsu II, a Ghanaian prince who rebelled against the Dutch overlords in 1837 and was executed and decapitated, after which his head was shipped to the Netherlands. Japin discovered the head in 2005, in the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC).[5][6] In March 2009, government officials announced that it would be returned to its homeland for proper burial,[7][8] a promise fulfilled on 23 July 2009, after a ceremony held in The Hague.[9]

The book was an instant success in the Netherlands,[10][11][12] and is now considered a classic of modern Dutch literature. Its English translation was praised in The New York Times as "Japin's rich and risky first novel", "a deeply humane book about a spectacularly exotic subject";[13] and by Heidi Benson in the San Francisco Chronicle as "a true story, fully and humanly imagined, and that is the measure of Japin's accomplishment."[14] The novel was also positively reviewed in Ghana; a reviewer in The Statesman wrote: "With simple and poignant prose, Japin is able to convincingly take the voice of a real-life historical figure, and thus illuminate the past sins of the author's own country, as well as those of a long-dead Ashanti king."[15]

It was translated in English as The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi (2000)[13] and in Portuguese as O preto de coração brancoe (2003).[16] In November 2007, an opera based on the novel premiered in Rotterdam, with an English libretto by Japin and music by the British composer Jonathan Dove.[17][18][19]

• Elmina Java Museum

• Excerpt from the novel