The radiance of the king
By: Camara Laye ; translated from the French by James Kirkup ; introduction by Toni Morrison
Contributors: Kirkup, James, 1918-2009
Series: NYRB classics
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 279
ISBN-13: 9781590174555
Subjects: Shipwrecks; Fiction
Work titles: Regard du roi
Description: "At the beginning of this book, a masterpiece of African literature, Clarence, a white man, has been shipwrecked and stranded on the coast of Africa. Brimful of 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 slowly stripped of his pretensions, until he is sold as a slave to the royal harem. 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 strange humanity in the alien figure of the king."
Notes: Originally published in French: Le regard du roi. Librairie Plon, 1954. Translation originally published: Fontana Books, 1965.