num_pages: 456
description: The reincarnation of a legendary nineteenth-century Caribbean emperor as a contemporary African leader is at the heart of this novel. Sacred River deals with the extraordinary lives hopes powerful myths stories and tragedies of the people of a modern West African nation. It is also the compelling love story of an idealistic philosophy professor and an ex-courtesan of incomparable beauty. Two hundred years after his death the great Haitian emperor Henri Christophe miraculously appears in a dream to Tankor Satani president of the fictional West African country of Kissi with instructions for Tankor to continue Henri Christophes rule which had been interrupted by that damned Napoleon. Ambitious in scope Sacred River is a diaspora-inspired novel in which Cheney-Coker has tackled the major themes of politics social strife crime and punishment and human frailty and redemption in Malagueta the fictional magical town and its surroundings first created by the author in The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar  for which he was awarded the coveted Commonwealth Writers Prize. Sacred River is equally about love and politics and marks the return to fiction of one of Africas major writers.
language: English
title: Sacred River: A Novel
publisher: Ohio University Press