Writer for October - Jojo Cobbinah

Writer for October - Jojo Cobbinah
Writers Project of Ghana and the Goethe Institute are pleased to announce this month’s public reading event. The acclaimed travel writer and novelist, Jojo Cobbinah, is our guest.

The reading and interaction will take place at the Goethe Institute in Accra on October 30, 2013, from 7 PM - 8 PM.

Jojo Cobbinah was born in Bogoso in 1948. After schooling in Tarkwa and Takoradi, he went on to study at the universities of Cape Coast, Abidjan and Dijon. Moving to Germany in 1973, he settled in the Rhein-Main Region, mastered the German language, and began working as a teacher, translator, and journalist.

In 1993, on appointment as translator at Mannesmann’s in Frankfurt, he started his writing career with the first and only travel guide on Ghana written in German, which is now in its eleventh edition. The German chapter of UNESCO acclaimed this book as the best and most profound on any African country. Jojo went on to write further guidebooks on Senegal-Gambia and Madeira and also wrote a cookbook on West African food.

Jojo chanced on the life-story of Dr. Anton Wilhelm Amo, the first African to have lived, studied and lectured in Europe (1706-1749). Fascinated, Jojo went on to research the story, and wrapped up the results of his work in an extensive novel, Dr Amo’s Lonely Planet (Peter Meyer Verlag, Frankfurt (2013)). Dr Amo’s Lonely Planet is available on Amazon.

After almost four decades in Germany, Jojo Cobbinah, now on retirement, has resettled in Ghana. He still keeps close links to Germany and also continues to write regularly for the African Courier, an international magazine published in Heidelberg, Germany. He has three adult children.

Date: Wednesday, 30th October, 2013. Time: 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm. Location: Goethe-Institute Accra, 30 Kakramadu Road, (next to NAFTI), Cantonments, Accra. Admission is free.