The Viceroy of Ouidah by Chatwin
The Viceroy of Ouidah (1980)
by Bruce Chatwin
126 pages - Picador
Bruce Chatwin set out to write a non-fictipn book about the slave-trader Francisco Felix de Souza, but couldn't gather enough reliable information, so he wrote a novel and changed the character's name to Francisco Manoel da Silva. The story starts with a look at the present-day descendants of da Silva in West Africa, and then travels back in time to the early 1800s, with da Silva's impoverished childhood and adolescence in Brazil, and how he comes to the opportunity to take a ship to Dahomey (presently known as Benin), and re-open a slave port. Da Silva finds success there, but he also needs to negotiate with the often mercurial king and the native population, and deal with a world in which public slave-trading is becoming more and more unacceptable.
For a slim novel this packs quite a punch, and covers a lot of ground. Chatwin is an excellent writer, and includes so much detail in the narrative that you wonder at how he was able to do so much research, and then fit it so seamlessly into the narrative. The story is very absorbing and the author does a good job of portraying the complex factors that were involved in the slave trade of the time. It left me eagerly wanting to read more of Chatwin.
This novel was made into the excellent film Cobra Verde, directed by Werner Herzog.
by Bruce Chatwin
126 pages - Picador
Bruce Chatwin set out to write a non-fictipn book about the slave-trader Francisco Felix de Souza, but couldn't gather enough reliable information, so he wrote a novel and changed the character's name to Francisco Manoel da Silva. The story starts with a look at the present-day descendants of da Silva in West Africa, and then travels back in time to the early 1800s, with da Silva's impoverished childhood and adolescence in Brazil, and how he comes to the opportunity to take a ship to Dahomey (presently known as Benin), and re-open a slave port. Da Silva finds success there, but he also needs to negotiate with the often mercurial king and the native population, and deal with a world in which public slave-trading is becoming more and more unacceptable.
For a slim novel this packs quite a punch, and covers a lot of ground. Chatwin is an excellent writer, and includes so much detail in the narrative that you wonder at how he was able to do so much research, and then fit it so seamlessly into the narrative. The story is very absorbing and the author does a good job of portraying the complex factors that were involved in the slave trade of the time. It left me eagerly wanting to read more of Chatwin.
This novel was made into the excellent film Cobra Verde, directed by Werner Herzog.