Novel
Other Leopards
Denis Williams · 1963
Synopsis
In Johkara, an imaginary country modelled on Sudan, between a Muslim North and a Christian South, Lionel Froad, a Guyanese trained in Britain, works as a draughtsman on the excavations of the English archaeologist Hughie King. He has come to Africa to look for his roots, the ancestral Lobo he sets against his Christian name. But the exhumed statues of Queen Amanishakete disabuse him, two women, Eve and Catherine, divide him, and the two political camps fight over his pen.
Context
Written in Khartoum in the second half of the fifties and partly autobiographical, the novel appeared in London in 1963 from New Authors, an imprint of Hutchinson, while the author was teaching in Africa. Victor J. Ramraj compares it to The Leopard by V. S. Reid and to Walcott's poem A Far Cry from Africa. Fairly well received, it was reissued in 2009 by Peepal Tree in the Caribbean Modern Classics series, which presents it as one of the most important Caribbean novels of the last half-century.
Who it is for
For reading, in English, a Caribbean novel on the search for origins in Africa, by a painter turned archaeologist.
Prizes and reception
William Elliott judges the narrative fragmentary and episodic, and often hard going.
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