I just finished reading Susanna Clarke’s delightful fantasy novel, Piranesi. The protagonist, Piranesi, lives in a house that has an infinite number of rooms, endless corridors, and a maze of halls. There are thousands upon thousands of different statues covering the building’s walls. A giant ocean is trapped within the house’s mammoth space, and its huge waves frequently flood the rooms and staircases, meaning that Piranesi has to keep a watchful eye at all times to avoid drowning.

The house is Piranesi’s world. The only other person in that world, as far as he knows, is another man called “The Other,” with whom he has a standing arrangement to meet twice every week. The Other is doing research into a “Great and Secret Knowledge” and he needs Piranesi’s help with the project, hence their meetings. Piranesi has absolutely no idea that there is another physical world outside of the house’s walls, where billions of other people live. He thinks he and The Other are the only humans in the universe.

Unbeknownst to Piranesi, he used to inhabit the real world, where his actual name was Matthew Rose Sorensen. He was given the “Piranesi” moniker when he entered his new “world.” He had been “transported” there by the teachings of a man named Laurence Arne-Sayles, who was referred to as “Prophet” in the novel. Arne-Sayles was a professor of psychology. Through his “Theory of other Worlds,” he had succeeded in convincing a group of his disciples, all highly intelligent people, that there were other worlds to which he could take them. One of those adherents was Dr. Valentine Ketterly. As it turned out, Ketterly was The Other. He manipulated Sorensen for years and managed to get him to buy so completely into the other-world theory that he lost all memory of the world he lived in previously. He could neither remember his family nor his own name.

As I read Piranesi, my mind kept going back to the world in which I was raised in West Africa. It was an environment in which some people claimed to have supernatural powers that enabled them to sense all kinds of bad omens, and the destructive impacts they would have on certain individuals. Unlike Arne-Sayles, most of those West African “prophets” were illiterate or poorly educated people. But they held so much sway over the society that the overwhelming majority of people, including highly educated ones, were heavily influenced by their claims.

Typically, the prophets would, directly or through family members or close friends, communicate to unsuspecting individuals that they were in imminent danger of suffering some grave illness, death, or some other awful misfortune. And invariably, the menace was claimed to have originated from some evil spell that other people in the community had cast upon the would-be victims. The only way to forestall such impending doom was to pay huge sums of money or make some other lavish offerings to the prophets for them to perform curative rituals.

Illiteracy rates were quite high in Ghana when I was growing up there so it was understandable that those beliefs were quite common then. Rather surprisingly, they seem to have become even more widespread now. The proliferation of prophets in that highly superstitious society perhaps explains the trend.

My own family once had a brush with a prophet when I was still a boy in Ghana. It was during a summer break from school when my older brother Emmanuel and I were helping our father on his farm in a village called Okumaning. The two of us were his usual helpers but on that occasion, our younger sister Charlotte happened to be there for a short visit. She was about ten years old at the time. We had carried produce to market in a nearby village and were on our way back to the farm when the prophet accosted Emmanuel and Charlotte. Because I was walking a bit faster than them, I was a couple of hundred yards ahead and did not witness the encounter.

Several minutes after I arrived at the farm, I could hear Charlotte wailing as she and Emmanuel approached the tiny hut that was our living quarters. I was quite baffled so I stepped out to meet them. My father heard her as well and rushed back from another section of the farm where he was. By then, Charlotte was inconsolable. He asked her what the problem was. Emmanuel told him that when they were traveling through one of the small villages on the way back, a man there told them he had a premonition that Charlotte would die within a few days if her parents didn’t come quickly to pay for his services—performance of some rituals that would save her.

My father was incandescent. He promptly grabbed his hunting rifle and summoned Emmanuel and Charlotte to come with him to go and meet with the prophet. I was asked to stay behind in the hut. My father was never a violent man, but the combination of his rage and his possession of a gun seemed like a rather explosive cocktail and it made me extremely nervous. I knew that it was most likely going to be an angry confrontation with the prophet, and that it could very well have a dreadfully disastrous outcome.

Two hours went by without any hint of them and my anxiety level started going through the roof. After waiting several more minutes, I couldn’t take it any longer so I decided to go and look for them. Just as I was stepping out, I heard their voices in the distance. All three of them looked rather relaxed as they approached the hut, and Charlotte was smiling. I let out a huge sigh of relief.

According to Emmanuel, the prophet was sitting in the same spot when they went back to that village. After several minutes of relentless questioning by my father, he couldn’t explain how he obtained his knowledge of Charlotte’s imminent death. My father then demanded that he admit his lie and apologize to Charlotte. Emmanuel said the prophet refused initially, but eventually acquiesced because looking at the rifle in my father’s hand, he didn’t want to take any chances.

I wasn’t at all surprised by my father’s reaction to that incident. Life had dealt him a bad hand, but through a combination of great determination, hard work, and unimaginable sacrifice, he had managed to keep himself and his family together. He absolutely abhorred people who sat around lazily and tried to use dishonest means to make a living. To him, that was what the prophet was attempting to do. My father explained to us later that he demanded the prophet’s acknowledgement and apology in front of Charlotte because he knew it was the only way her mind would be set completely at ease. That was how protective he was of his family.

Having spent so much time around my father during my youth, I now look at the world in much the same way that he did. He never complicated life. He dealt with the world exactly as he saw it with his naked eyes, and had no superstitious beliefs. Always taking his destiny into his own hands, he strongly believed that what you got out of life was predominantly determined by how much effort you put into whatever goals you were pursuing.

In my view, the Einsteins, Da Vincis, Mozarts, Beethovens, and other geniuses that the world has known, did have some superhuman abilities that enabled them to do extraordinary things. But they were still mortal. I don’t believe that they had any greater view into the spiritual realm than any of their fellow humans did. That is why I am always puzzled when I see anyone making life decisions based on what they have been told by some prophet.

Laurence Arne-Sayles did enormous harm to Matthew Rose Sorensen and many others. Some of his disciples were kept in captivity, while some reportedly died in mysterious circumstances. There were rumors that he killed them. All that was motivated by his quest for academic prestige. The prophets in West Africa, in contrast, seek monetary and other material rewards. The damage they inflict on people is equally grave. I am glad that I have never put any stock in any claims made by a seer.