A Harlot's Progress reinvents William Hogarth's famous print of 1732, which tells the story of a prostitute, a Jewish merchant, a magistrate, and a quack doctor bound together by sexual and financial greed. David Dabydeen's novel endows Hogarth's characters with alternative lives, redeeming them from their cliched status as predators or victims. The protagonist--in Hogarth, a black slave boy, in Dabydeen, London's oldest black inhabitant--tells his story to the Abolitionists in return for their charity. But instead of embarking upon yet another fictional journey into the dark nature of slavery, he spins a tale of myths, half-truths, and fantasies: recreating Africa and 18th-century London in startlingly poetic ways.
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Editorial Reviews
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"David Dabydeen's new novel takes as its starting point Hogarth's painting of 1732...and sets out to release the people it represents - prostitute, merchant, quack doctor and slave boy - from easy moralism, both the artist's and our own... Dabydeen has an imaginative mastery of the period, and can render it a hundred ways." - Observer
"Exhilarating...Beguiling and provocative." - The Times
"The best of the younger generation of Caribbean novelists." - Penelope Lively
"Exhilarating...Beguiling and provocative." - The Times
"The best of the younger generation of Caribbean novelists." - Penelope Lively
From the Back Cover
"David Dabydeen's new novel takes as its starting point Hogarth's painting of 1732...and sets out to release the people it represents - prostitute, merchant, quack doctor and slave boy - from easy moralism, both the artist's and our own... Dabydeen has an imaginative mastery of the period, and can render it a hundred ways." - Observer
"Exhilarating...Beguiling and provocative." - The Times
"The best of the younger generation of Caribbean novelists." - Penelope Lively
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