Bitter Sweet

The beautifully written history of a uniquely West African nut with a truly global story.

The kola nut is a seed indigenous to West Africa, a seed that ancient caravan travellers chewed to survive their harsh desert journeys, the ‘Cola’ in Coca-Cola.

Bitter Sweet is an invitation into West Africa. Deeply involved in the lives of communities from Senegal to Cameroon, the kola nut has played a central role in customs, commerce and cuisine throughout the region’s vast, varied history. Searching for stories about this caffeine-rich seed as a way to better understand her West African home, acclaimed author Ayesha Harruna Attah takes readers along the Niger River, through the red sands of the Sahel and across the Atlantic Ocean. She traces her family’s roots in Ghana’s forests and savannah, where they were once kola traders and cultivators. In encounters with craftspeople, cultural custodians and descendants of enslaved people who travelled with kola to the Americas, she discovers what this unique commodity can tell us about West African identity and tradition—and about the region’s place in a messy, interconnected world. Along the way, she begins to fall in love with West Africa.

Blending history, travelogue and cultural exploration, Bitter Sweet shows us that after that first bitter bite of kola always comes sweetness.