He Sleeps: A Novel [Paperback]

Reginald McKnight (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 7, 2002

Bertrand, a young African-American anthropologist, has ostensibly come to Senegal to do field research. In truth, he left his home in Denver to gain a fresh perspective on his troubled marriage. Struggling to fit in with his new Senegalese family--Alaine, his wife Kene, and their young daughter--Bertrand finds himself, for the first time in his life, haunted by surreal and increasingly violent dreams. His waking hours are no less sinister; unwittingly, it seems, Bertrand has become caught in the tension--sexual and otherwise--building between the married couple.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this passionately written, thoughtfully conceived novel, McKnight (White Boys) portrays a man's confrontation with racial identity in its most elemental form. Bertrand Milworth, a young African-American anthropologist, moves to Senegal to complete research on myths and legends in village societies, leaving his white wife, Rose, behind in Colorado. A true babe in the woods, Bertrand rents a room in a house inhabited by a fiery young Senegalese couple and quickly finds himself tormented by his attraction to Kene and his resentment of her devious husband, Alaine. As his research falters amid worries about his failing marriage, Bertrand an intellectual taught to view race solely as an abstraction begins to view the question more viscerally. Through subtle excursions into Bertrand's past and vivid recreations of his disturbing dreams, McKnight brings his character's insecurities about race to the fore, particularly his anxiety about African-American women and penchant for white girlfriends. As his subconscious life encroaches on his daily waking existence, Bertrand begins to suspect that his alien identity in the village has put him in danger. Here, McKnight's language wonderfully evokes the sights and smells of the African landscape, transforming the dark terrain of his character's mind into a plot of intrigue and mystery. As its multiple layers thicken and converge, the narrative twists and turns, alternating perspectives and voices, spinning at times almost out of the author's control. McKnight's prose swings wildly between the blandly recognizable phrases of American slang in Bertrand's journal and his letters home, to the lyrical descriptions of his thoughts as his grip on reality slips. At times frustratingly opaque, McKnight's intricate plot remains gripping, and he constructs an illuminating tale about race, gender and our fragile sense of self.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Bertrand Milworth is an African American anthropologist researching folktale urban legends in Senegal. He has left his wife, Rose, back in the U.S., their relationship in tatters after he slept with a colleague. From Senegal, Bertrand tries to repair their relationship by writing to her constantly and bombarding her with unwanted phone calls. But things in Senegal are going no more smoothly; Alaine and Kene, the husband and wife with whom Bertrand shares a house, are having marital problems of their own, and Bertrand is unnerved by his own attraction to Kene. Even sleep offers no respite--for the first time in his life, Bertrand is tormented by vivid, graphic dreams. As tensions rise between him and Alaine and Kene, Bertrand is forced to confront some of the issues that trouble him deeply--and also the fact that he seems to have made enemies in the village where he is staying. McKnight examines Bertrand from every angle, gracefully switching between first-, third-, and even second-person narration, creating a complex portrait of a deeply conflicted man. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Picador (September 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312421044
• ISBN-13: 978-0312421045
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #727,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Small Gem, October 12, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: He Sleeps: A Novel (Paperback)

HE SLEEPS is an engaging and scary portrait of an African American anthropologist in Senegal, trying to make sense of two worlds: the one he left behind in America, and this new one in Senegal. Unlike any number of contemporary writers who use self-conscious techniques that merely call attention to themselves, McKnight employees a wide range of rhetorical strategies to tell his story (letters, straight narrative, journals), but they are never distracting in HE SLEEPS, and after you've finished the novel and stand back, you realize that the various parts create a larger and more complex picture. I have no doubt that McKnight's reputation will continue to grow. HE SLEEPS is a novel that should be taught in university African American lit. courses not only because it defies conventions of a genre, conventions that, ironically, professors come to expect from black writers, but because it's a damned good book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Senegal Calling, November 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: He Sleeps: A Novel (Paperback)

This is a really exceptional short novel. The main character is a black American ethnographer doing field work in Senegal. He's looking for material for his research project, variations on contemporary African legends. The story is told as much through the character's own writing as through conventional narrative, beginning with his letters to his estranged wife back in Denver, which include extraordinarily vivid descriptions of the people and things he encounters in Senegal, and his notebook, which contains his work, but increasingly discloses his emotional and spiritual life. As the character inexplicably starts sleeping and dreaming more and more, the line between dreaming and waking life becomes blurred. A kind of talisman is found, and there are suggestions that someone has put a curse on him and made him sick, but he doesn't know who, or even what's happening to him.

His interracial marriage is effectively over because of an infidelity and his wife suspects further involvements while he's in Senegal. His refusal to let go, her uncommunicativeness, his attraction to a beautiful married Senegalese woman (one of a family of inadvertent housemates), and the unremitting dreams, are the catalysts which result in a self-examination of his attitudes towards race and sexuality. There's a haunting scene at the barracoon at Goree Island in which the woman who accompanies him discloses something unexpected about her own past.

A complex, uneasy relationship exists between the character and the culture he's studying. There's some basis for mutual understanding between the Senegalese, who are mostly educated in the West, and the American, who's a student of their culture. Interestingly, the novel pays homage to Amos Tutuola's "The Palm Wine Drinkard," a book which made an impression on him in college (I picked up a copy after reading this novel). When he first arrives in Senegal, he's shown some deference by his taxi driver due to the nature of his research work, but later a child innocently refers to him as a toubob, which is ironic because his identity as a black man is vital to his sense of self. Whatever acceptance he receives comes with varying degrees of mistrust, attraction, jealousy, and animosity, and there's a feeling that he's being judged in ways he really can't understand. What defines a man in their culture may be more a matter of tradition and ritual than race. In one sense (strictly my interpretation), this novel describes a cross-cultural collision between traditional African communal society and the European notion of legitimation through writing and the irony is that a black American is the man in the middle. The judgement against him, based upon the inner self revealed in his writing, could almost be a metaphor for the honesty of this novel. And unless I'm mistaken, it would appear that some of the oral narratives he's been collecting and transcribing are more than legends, they're stories which may belong to the very cultural rite of passage into manhood with which he becomes intimately acquainted in the book's harrowing climax...

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wake up and read this!, February 15, 2002

By 

B! (Round Rock, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: He Sleeps: A Novel (Hardcover)

This was a lyrical dream to read. I like the way the author puts us in the mind and in the life of the main character. The action is a little weak, especially when it picks up towards the end of the story, but the mood he puts you in, the images he creates and the relationships you get to observe make this a nice read. Going over his words is much like taking in poetry. The character development was very strong, even though I really didn't like the main character, I was really able to feel how his issues impacted his life and in part why he went through the story the way he did.