Life
Kodwo Eshun was born and raised in the far northern suburbs of London. His father was a prominent diplomat to the United Kingdom. His family is of the Fante people of Ghana, and his younger brother is the author and journalist Ekow Eshun.
As a youth, Eshun undertook a study of comic books, J. G. Ballard, and rock music. According to his brother, Eshun was heavily disturbed and influenced by the 1979 coup of Ghana carried out by J.J. Rawlings.
In his first book, Kodwo Eshun devised a unique page-numbering system, beginning in negative numbers. On page -01, he wrote:
- At 17, Kodwo Eshun won an Open Scholarship to read Law at University College, Oxford. After eight days he switched to Literary Theory, magazine journalism and running clubs. He is not a cultural critic or cultural commentator so much as a concept engineer, an imagineer at the millenium's end writing on electronic music, science fiction, technoculture, gameculture, drug culture, post war movies and post war art for The Face, The Wire, i-D, Melody Maker, Spin, Arena and The Guardian.
He later described his decision to pursue music journalism professionally as a devotional act that included a vow of poverty.
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