Seasons of Four Faces
by Benjamin Kwakye
Genre: Literary Fiction / Historical / Africa
ISBN: 9798988974598
Print Length: 495 pages
Reviewed by Toni Woodruff
A transcendental story of a mythic man in love with a mythic woman
Tiempo is a brave and effective warrior, and he’ll do anything to be with Sharifa, a healer. Despite her showing some signs of potential love, she tells him it’s not going to happen—that it’s impossible—that he’ll have to fight in some inconsequential amount of wars and survive to have her hand. Say, 18 of them. Tiempo accepts the challenge.
While it’s surprising to the reader, it’s not so much for the narrator that winning isn’t difficult for Tiempo. He wins war after war without us having to spend narrative time with most of them. We don’t get 18 wars in this book—the story space belongs to the transcendental, maybe neverending life of a mythic man in love with a mythic woman.
Of course, there’s always danger lurking—personal and close. When he’s attacked, he doesn’t die. Maybe he can’t.
After Tiempo’s initial separation from Sharifa, the journey of this inventive novel really begins. Almost like a Forrest Gump of African history, Seasons of Four Faces brings Tiempo, a mythically powerful man from Pharoah’s Egypt to Mecca with Mansa Musa to the War of the Golden Stool, and, in the end, to Ghana, fighting for independence.
Benjamin Kwakye showcases his creativity, forethought, and tactical structuring skills in his epic, not-so-true history. Kwakye is a poet, and it shows. This book takes great care to engage us on the line level as much as it does on the plot level. The sentences are crafted with an eye for detail, an appreciation for sound, and a tone that matches the historical world. While we’re telling a story of African history in Seasons of Four Faces, the magic of myths still applies. Maybe there are ghosts here. Maybe healing. Maybe more.
Tiempo plays a vital role in the community each time he enters a new one, always offering of himself to their leaders and keeping hope alive of seeing Sharifa again. The romance is what keeps us looking big-picture in this book. Yes, I want him to assimilate and help with important matters in these new places, but we’re always driven and hopeful that the reunion is coming.
It can be difficult to fall in line with the concept of fighting 18 wars—and thus ending so many lives in the process—to win a woman’s hand, but over time, the understanding of this changes. It becomes about length, about impossibility, about inevitability, about true love, about seeing the future and living it over and over again.
I wouldn’t call this an easy novel. It’s literary fiction at its heart—long, winding sentences that say what they say but mean more than that—and it covers hundreds of years and features brand new named characters all the way through the book. It’s never exactly pretending to be easy—a novel about history and people with real names and real stories—but it’s true that the paragraphs can feel long and the character list even longer. The twists and turns of an active plot keep the long book moving though. So much happens: wars, love triangles, backstabs, babies, politics, and beyond.
Seasons of Four Faces is a chance to time travel. Not only for you to head back to Pharaoh times but for you to transcend generations alongside a timeless, powerful, mythic main character. There’s a lot to unpack in this book. So get started.
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