Novel
The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar
Syl Cheney-Coker · 1990
Synopsis
A general, condemned for attempting a coup d'état against a tyrant, awaits his execution in a prison in Malagueta. The narrative then goes back two centuries, to the arrival on the coast of Jeanette Cromantine, widow of a former slave of the plantations of the New World, and follows the founding of the town by freed slaves, Englishmen, Arabs and local people, under the gaze of Sulaiman the Nubian, half man and half sorcerer, who will become Alusine Dunbar and has foretold the destiny of Malagueta.
Context
Heinemann published the book in Oxford in 1990, at nearly four hundred pages, after three collections of verse. Its author takes as his setting Malagueta, an imaginary country whose history draws on that of Sierra Leone and Liberia, both settled in part by freed slaves. He has said he wanted to break with the tradition of the African novel established by Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, by drawing on sources outside the continent: his debt to Gabriel García Márquez has led to the work being classed among the magical realisms, a classification that other critics dispute.
Who it is for
In English, never translated into French. Best to know that the harmattan is the dust-laden wind that blows along this coast in the dry season.
Prizes and reception
Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Africa in 1991; Publishers Weekly praised its sweep while regretting the abundance of adjectives.
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