The Viceroy of Ouidah

Posted on 23 November 2019 by Bruce Chatwin

In 1812, Francisco Manoel da Silva, escaping a life of poverty in Brazil, sailed to the African kingdom of Dahomey, determined to make his fortune in the slave trade Armed with nothing but an iron will, he became a man of substance in Ouidah and the founder of a remarkable dynasty His one remaining ambition is to return to Brazil in triumph, but his friendship with the mad, mercurial king of Dahomey is fraught with danger and threatens his dream. Best Read [ The Viceroy of Ouidah ] author [ Bruce Chatwin ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr Probably the best novel I ve read so far this year I had never read anything by Chatwin before this and I picked it up with the assumption it was going to just be another novel in the English style How wrong I was Chatwin writes like abloody and concise version of Marquez, with an incredible ability to evoke landscapes, situations and the oddities of people Imagine a cross between Marquez and Conrad s Heart of Darkness with the addition of several big spoonfuls of voodoo imagery Probably the best novel I ve read so far this year I had never read anything by Chatwin before this and I picked it up with the assumption it was going to just be another novel in the English style How wrong I was Chatwin writes lik...It makes me sad, but with The Viceroy of Ouidah I ve come to the last of Bruce Chatwin s long form works All that remain are a handful of essays and other short pieces He might have lived a little longer, just to please me by writing , but that s not the way things worked out I was a teenager when he died in 1989.I was not an admirer of Chatwin s work on first introduction His eccentric interests and not quite fact, not quite fiction approach to writing threw me for a loop But as I grew It makes me sad, but with The Viceroy of Ouidah I ve come to the last of Bruce Chatwin s long form works All that remain are a handful of essays and other short pieces He might have lived a little longer, just to please me by writing , but that s not the way things worked out I was a teenager when he died in 1989.I was not an admirer of Chatwin s work on first introduction His eccentric interests and not quite fact, not quite fiction approach to writing threw me for a loop But as I grew older and stranger, and henceappreciative of strangeness in general, I found in Chatwin an enjoyable companion I ve said before that reading Chatwin is like watching Werner Herzog movies, and I stand by the comparison.In fact, Herzog made a film version of the book in question He called the film Cobra Verde and Klaus Kinski played the sta...A grim, but outstanding story on the evils of the slave trade, with a focus on the African coast Chatwin crafts a story that is as psychologically probing as Conrad s Heart of Darkness Kurtz , and as bizarre as Marquez s Autumn of the Patriarch a mad African king, a city of skulls and heads, women warriors with filed teeth The common ground for all three is moral corruption However, I think the horror of Chatwin s vision, as opposed to Conrad s, is there seems to be no recognition of A grim, but outstanding story on the evils of the slave trade, with a focus on the African coast Chatwin crafts a story that is as psychologically probing as Conrad s Heart of Darkness Kurtz , and as bizarre as Marquez s Autumn of the Patriarch a mad African king, a city of skulls and heads, women warriors with filed teeth The common ground for all three is moral corruption However, I think the horror of Chatwin s vision, as opposed to Conrad s, is there seems to be no recognition of descent by Felix da Silva Unlike Kurtz, da Silva is a poor man who knows hardship and brutality already He simply gravitates toward opportunity slave trade, early 1800s , and in time b...An interesting way of telling of the slavery days of Dahomey, the mad violent King s and of the Portuguese trader who made and lost a fortune before dying, leaving a plethora of children to pine for what could have been The boo...You recognize a Bruce Chatwin sentence the moment you look at it, in the same way you recognize a painting by Dali or Gauguin the moment you look at it Here, he goes technicolor, taking into account every sight and sound of the jungle as he takes on the slave trade on the West Coast of Africa, and shows just how deep the depravity of humanity goes, and the cold logic of capital that is willing to follow that depravity as far as possible just up to the point where the profit motive is You recognize a Bruce Chatwin sentence the moment you look at it, in the same way you recognize a painting by Dali or Gauguin the moment you look at it Here, he goes technicolor, taking into account every sight and sound of the jungle as he takes on the ...A short novella absolutely packed to the gills with imagery and characters I recognize elements from Marquez including a definite Hundred Years of Solitude allusion and Conrad and fans of them will find much to love here, but there is distinctive fla...Bruce Chatwin s The Viceroy Of Ouidah masquerades as a small book In 50,000 words or so, the author presents a fictionalised life that has been embroidered from truth History, hyper reality, the supernatural and the surreal and the cocktail that creates the heady mix through which strands of story filter Overall the experience is much bigger than the slim book suggests.We meet Francisco Manuel da Silva, a Brazilian born in the country s north eas...not the best of Chatwin.Again at the risk of appearing shallow, this novel was read in the hope that it would demystify some of the intriguing details of the Herzog film Cobra Verde It did not Indeed, it turns out that the film is a loose adaptation of the novel, which is in turn a loose adaptation of history This is a pity because the true story of the 19th Century Brazilian slaver Francisco Felix de Sousa is yet another example of truth being farinteresting than fiction.In fairness, Chatwin s fictional Again at the risk of appearing shallow, this novel was read in the hope that it would demystify some of the intriguing details of the Herzog film Cobra Verde It did not Indeed, it turns out that the film is a loose adaptation of the novel, which is in turn a loose adaptation of history This is a pity because the true story of the 19th Century Brazilian slaver Francisco Felix de Sousa is yet another example of truth bei...Pretty decent novella Originally intended to be a non fiction biography of a famous slave trader The author felt he hadn t managed to get hold of enough facts so changed a couple of names and published it as fiction.A very rich and vivid descriptive style But its still essentially a biography an i m not a big fan of bio s Many books arefun to have read than to be reading this is the opposite Fun to read due to the style but didn t feel like i took away too much from the Pretty decent novella Originally intended to be a non fiction biography of a famous slave trader The author felt he hadn t managed to get hold of enough facts so changed a couple of names a...

English
23 November 2019

Bruce Chatwin