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Title: The Radiance of the King by Laye Camara, Toni Morrison, Camara Laye ISBN: 0-940322-58-7 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: 09 June, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: readable, but superficial
Comment: Artistcally, Camara's novel displays many of the weaknesses of a young novelist's first work: too often lush images do not equate character development, enthralling scenes seem to be written for themselves without significantly contributing to the novel's overall construction or character development, and the conclusion seems to surrender to his inability to have a clear (moral or ideological) intention behind the very problematic quest of the hero Clarence. In significant ways, I doubt that Camara had a clearly articulated or organic vision for the novel or the main characters: one increasingly recognizes the colonizer's satiric portrait, but the depictions of the major African figures seem even more dismissively caricatured. Ultimately, this novel sits uncomfortably between a colonized and a nationalist mentality, between the coopted view of a Sekyi and the mature nationalism of Soyinka's great novel "The Interpreters." Granted, from an African point of view, Camara is seeking to explore the very unsavory history of a people's colonization, if not their romance with the colonizer's image, but Achebe does it much more astutely in "Arrow of God," but both pale in comparison to Cheney-Coker's stunning epic "The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar."
Rating: 5
Summary: By far the best French African novel I have read
Comment: This book is a wild trip. The main character is a white French man, living in an unidentified African setting (although the author must have been inspired by his Guinean background), who is totally broke. We don't know anything about his backgrounds, his reasons for being in Africa, or his prior professional occupations. Rejected by the French community, he is bummed. To get out of his misery, he wants to meet a mysterious African king, and apply for a position as advisor at the court. In his quest to find the king, the white man gives up his 'white' identity, and gets in touch with a variety of weird and fascinating characters: an old griot, two annoying boys, a mad village priest. During his journey, 'regular' situations rapidly degenerate into eery hallucinations.
One of the things I especially liked in this breathtaking literary masterpiece was that Camara Laye didn't emphasize human weaknesses of a white oppressor (like Oyono enjoys doing, although I like Oyono a lot); Laye didn't try to denounce Colonialism as a system either, like Cheikh Hamidou Kane or Pramoudya Ananta Toer have done (quite well, of course) - I think that a novel is not the most suited platform to do that: characters quickly tend to become boring academic abstractions rather than interesting people and the literary power of the work suffers. Instead, Laye gradually "forgets" the whiteness of his main character, emphasizing the humanity of all players.
Anyway, Camara Laye's "The radiance of the king" (I read the original French "Le regard du roi" - I can only hope the translation is just as good) is a truly unique book in style and content. Definitely a must-read!
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Title: Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved by Jonathan Star ISBN: 1585420646 Publisher: J. P. Tarcher Pub. Date: 05 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov, Chingiz Aiitmatov, Chinghiz Aitmatov, John French ISBN: 0253204828 Publisher: Indiana University Press Pub. Date: February, 1988 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Ramayana: A Modern Retelling of the Great Indian Epic by Ramesh Menon, Valmiki ISBN: 0865476608 Publisher: North Point Press Pub. Date: May, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Kokoro by Natsume Soseki, Edwin McClellan, Soseki Natsume ISBN: 0895267152 Publisher: Regnery Publishing Pub. Date: May, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Heights of Macchu Picchu : Bilingual Edition by Nathaniel Tarn, Pablo Neruda ISBN: 0374506485 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1967 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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