Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
NYRB Classics (2001), Paperback, 279 pages
Description
At the beginning of this masterpiece of African literature, Clarence, a white man, has been shipwrecked on the coast of Africa. Flush with self-importance, he demands to see the king, but the king has just left for the south of his realm. Traveling through an increasingly phantasmagoric landscape in the company of a beggar and two roguish boys, Clarence is gradually stripped of his pretensions, until he is sold to the royal harem as a slave. But in the end Clarence&’s bewildering journey is the occasion of a revelation, as he discovers the image, both shameful and beautiful, of his own humanity in the alien splendor of the king
User reviews
LibraryThing member GlebtheDancer
This is an odd book, very odd, that kind of defies description. I falls broadly into the category of books written specifically to challenge European ideas about concepts such as ‘race’, ‘civilisation’ and ‘Africa’. To this end it is comparable with books such as ‘Things Fall Apart’
The two books I mention above have a subtlety of approach that is entirely lacking from ‘The Radiance of the King’. Books that challenge preconceptions are always welcome, but Clarence’s preconceptions are that whites are better than blacks, and that everyone (white and black) should accept this. This is something of a caricature of contemporary racial attitudes (at least in the environment I am in), so the effort put in to challenging it seemed a little silly. Other scenarios involve him fleeing the police through the streets lead by a bare-chested women who, when Clarence expresses worry about being recognised, tells him not to worry because everyone would be looking at her breasts. This was presumably designed to challenge the newsreel idea that African women were habitually topless. And again he is duped into sleeping with a different woman every night, believing that they are all the same person, presumably because they all look the same to him. The book was written in the 1950s, and sets out to challenge a 1950s brand of racism which, while I am not naïve enough to believe that nobody still has those ideas, didn’t resonate with me today.
The farcical storey line, and tone, didn’t engage me, but just when I thought my attention was slipping away the book would transform into weird hallucinogenic scenarios that were, to say the least, bizarrely placed and executed. The book would earn 5 stars for uniqueness, but possibly only 1 for focus. It was an interesting reading experience, and one which I’m glad I had, but I still can’t make my mind up whether or not I actually enjoyed it.
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or ‘Heart of Darkness’. However, Camara’s book is a weird mix of farcical events, hallucinogenic interludes and quasi-religious moralising. It follows Clarence, a white European who finds himself broke and destitute in a West African nation. He goes in search of employment with the king, assuming his white skin will mark his superiority and elevate him above the natives. However, his hopes of an audience recede as he is manipulated and deceived by those around him, events which eventually puncture his certainties about his innate European superiority.The two books I mention above have a subtlety of approach that is entirely lacking from ‘The Radiance of the King’. Books that challenge preconceptions are always welcome, but Clarence’s preconceptions are that whites are better than blacks, and that everyone (white and black) should accept this. This is something of a caricature of contemporary racial attitudes (at least in the environment I am in), so the effort put in to challenging it seemed a little silly. Other scenarios involve him fleeing the police through the streets lead by a bare-chested women who, when Clarence expresses worry about being recognised, tells him not to worry because everyone would be looking at her breasts. This was presumably designed to challenge the newsreel idea that African women were habitually topless. And again he is duped into sleeping with a different woman every night, believing that they are all the same person, presumably because they all look the same to him. The book was written in the 1950s, and sets out to challenge a 1950s brand of racism which, while I am not naïve enough to believe that nobody still has those ideas, didn’t resonate with me today.
The farcical storey line, and tone, didn’t engage me, but just when I thought my attention was slipping away the book would transform into weird hallucinogenic scenarios that were, to say the least, bizarrely placed and executed. The book would earn 5 stars for uniqueness, but possibly only 1 for focus. It was an interesting reading experience, and one which I’m glad I had, but I still can’t make my mind up whether or not I actually enjoyed it.
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LibraryThing member stillatim
Kafka plus Conrad turned upside down in Africa? Yes. Camara re-writes the Heart of Darkness as if it were a Kafkan parable, and, because that wasn't enough, writes from the close third POV of a white man, whose perceptions are entirely untrustworthy. But this is no grand existential statement about
Most of these "experiences" are caused by his own stupidity, whether that's an inability to understand the people around him, an inability to understand himself, or because he's doped out of his mind.
It's hard to over-state the difficulty of this novel. It's not difficult for a reader--there's a bit of surrealism, which is tough to deal with, but mostly it's funny, the set-pieces are excellent, and it's easy to follow what's going on. When one can't understand what's going on, that's because Clarence can't, either, and you just have to stick with it and wait for the one of the not-white characters to explain what Clarence's own stupidity is hiding from him (and us).
But it must have been very difficult to write such a conceptually coherent novel. To take just one small example, "an unnamed West African country" is already a whopping cliche. And yet Camara sticks to it, not because he doesn't want to set it in, e.g., Guinea, but because people like Clarence really do experience Africa as if it were one place, and so the names of nations/peoples/geographies are unimportant to them (us). Camara allows us to experience the women in the novel as sexual objects or housemaids, not because that's what he thinks women are, but because, again, that how people like Clarence (us) experience African women. That's before we get to the way he imbues Kafka's characteristic situations with a different narrative engine (the trip to the Castle/King becomes waiting for the King to come to Clarence), and incorporates Conrad (and inverts him: the King is the antithesis of Kurtz), and so on.
My only criticism is that the prose, whether it's Camara's or the translators, is utilitarian at best. I itch to edit this book. Random example: "And again he looked at the tunnel walls with an expression of terror on his face." On what else, I wonder, would the expression of terror be? Delete.
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subjectivism and so on. The point is quite clear, and quite terrifying for the white reader: Clarence is simply incapable of experiencing or understanding the (unnamed) West African country he finds himself in. What he experiences, instead, are all the usual cliches. Africa smells. Africans jump up and down a lot. Africa is full of charlatans and corruption. Africa is filthy. Africa is full of sexually available women. And so on.Most of these "experiences" are caused by his own stupidity, whether that's an inability to understand the people around him, an inability to understand himself, or because he's doped out of his mind.
It's hard to over-state the difficulty of this novel. It's not difficult for a reader--there's a bit of surrealism, which is tough to deal with, but mostly it's funny, the set-pieces are excellent, and it's easy to follow what's going on. When one can't understand what's going on, that's because Clarence can't, either, and you just have to stick with it and wait for the one of the not-white characters to explain what Clarence's own stupidity is hiding from him (and us).
But it must have been very difficult to write such a conceptually coherent novel. To take just one small example, "an unnamed West African country" is already a whopping cliche. And yet Camara sticks to it, not because he doesn't want to set it in, e.g., Guinea, but because people like Clarence really do experience Africa as if it were one place, and so the names of nations/peoples/geographies are unimportant to them (us). Camara allows us to experience the women in the novel as sexual objects or housemaids, not because that's what he thinks women are, but because, again, that how people like Clarence (us) experience African women. That's before we get to the way he imbues Kafka's characteristic situations with a different narrative engine (the trip to the Castle/King becomes waiting for the King to come to Clarence), and incorporates Conrad (and inverts him: the King is the antithesis of Kurtz), and so on.
My only criticism is that the prose, whether it's Camara's or the translators, is utilitarian at best. I itch to edit this book. Random example: "And again he looked at the tunnel walls with an expression of terror on his face." On what else, I wonder, would the expression of terror be? Delete.
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LibraryThing member ebethe
Started great; middle was way slow and terribly confusing; end was okay. Less than half-way through I felt like I was reading "The Castle" and several of Kafka's short stories set in the tropics. A 4 star for winding everyting together and setting the scene in a different area; not 4 stars because
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the writing just wasn't that goo. Show Less
LibraryThing member kaitanya64
It was a little frustrating and slow for me. I felt the author did a great job of re-creating, in a surrealistic way, the confusion and disorientation and lose of identity that a person feels in entering a totally new culture. But sometimes the conversations seemed to go on quite a long time. I
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think it is the kind of book that person will come back to after thinking about it for a while and read more carefully. It's a slow, meditative kind of read. Show Less
LibraryThing member skid0612
This 70 year old novel tells the story of a Europeans bewildering journey thru an unnamed African kingdom. The story touches on race and privileged behavior without it being the focus of the novel. Instead the reader is entranced by a wonderfully odd tale of discovery. The pretentious main
A wonderful story that lives up to the overused Kafkaesque moniker.
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protagonist (Clarence), so wildly without insight into his own character or the motivations of others, seemingly wanders forward in both dependence and arrogance. But is it really wandering?A wonderful story that lives up to the overused Kafkaesque moniker.
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Language
Original language
French
Original publication date
1954
Physical description
279 p.; 8.01 inches
ISBN
0940322587 / 9780940322585