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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scintillating prose about ghastly times, June 12, 1999
As an aspiring travel writer who has yet to publish anything, I turned green with envy on reading Bruce Chatwin's novel. In terse, spare prose, he summons up images that seem drawn from photography or haiku rather than from ordinary literature. He presents distant times (late 18th and early 19th century) and places (Brazil and Dahomey) linking them seamlessly with the steamy, sordid present---the paranoid military dictatorship of Benin in the crumbling West African post-colonial 1970s. Every page is redolent of color, smell, sound, and imminent disaster: every scene appears like a bead in a necklace of decay, corruption, cruelty and disaster. There are no wasted moments, no lagging sections. A poor boy from the Brazilian backlands becomes a rich, powerful slave trader in West Africa, but his background betrays him at home, his connections in Africa ultimately do the same. His largely illegitimate family continues into the seedy Benin of the present. My only criticism of this work is that Chatwin chose to concentrate solely on the Brazilian side of things, leaving the Africans as part of the backdrop--more acted upon than actors. Dahomey was a fascinating society and besides the anthropological researches of M. Herskovits, one can read Frank Yerby's "The Dahomeyan", though Yerby's prose pales in comparison to Chatwin's. A far better book, one which focuses on the Dahomeyan connection to Brazil as well, is Judith Gleason's "Agõtime", a possible antidote to the slant taken by Chatwin. Otherwise, this book contains superlative writing on every page, writing redolent with human nature, the mysteries of the soul, and the mundane horrors of much of human history. "The Viceroy of Ouidah" has the power to open periods and locations for readers that have seldom featured in Anglo-American writing. It is a stunning book.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic blend of fact and fiction, July 21, 2000
The Viceroy of Ouidah was Francisco Manoel De Souza, (da Silva in Chatwin's book) who came to Ouidah (also spelled "Whydah"; part of the Abomey Empire, later called "the Slave Coast", Dahomey, and currently, Benin) in the 1750s and eventually became the main broker between African slave sellers and European slave buyers. He played a significant role in the nation's history, and was actually named Viceroy of Ouidah by an Abomey king. Chatwin's "The Viceroy of Ouidah" (his fist novel, written after visiting West Africa) is a very well written book. I found it a pleasure to read, hard to put down (it is one of the few books I have read in a single sitting). It is a short book: nothing in Chatwin's text is extraneous; every sentence advances his story, which is an intriguing blend of fact and fiction, past and present. Werner Herzog made a film titled "Cobra Verde" (1988, starring Klaus Kinski) which is based on "The Viceroy of Ouidah". In his "Wonders of the African World" book and television program Henry Louis Gates, Jr. travels to modern-day Ouidah and encounters the descendents of De Souza, who still live on his estate.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Rise and Fall of a Slave Trader, September 26, 2001
For sheer dripping tropical lushness of prose that at the same time is watertight and flowing, nothing can beat Chatwin's VICEROY OF OUIDAH. I have long admired the author's essays, and this is only my second (and far from last) foray into his fiction. Picture to yourself a story in two parts, each occupying roughly half the book. The first is a gathering of Francisco da Silva's descendents years after his death; the second follows his life from its humble beginnings in Brazil to his glory days as a much-loved and much-hated slave-trader and finally ending in his slow undoing in the vortex of passions, jealousies, and greed in the West African society in which he lives. That same society was described by another great writer almost a century earlier. Sir Richard Francis Burton's A MISSION TO GELELE, KING OF DAHOMEY captures the scene perfectly some 50 years or so after da Silva's passing, including the all-female army regiments of the King and the weird dysfunctionality of his court. Chatwin seems to have taken a few leaves from Burton's book and woven a fascinating study of the rise and fall of a very limited man. We never really see into da Silva's mind: In the first part of the book, he is merely a revered forefather; in the second, an adventurer whose decline is as precipitate as Citizen Kane's. The King's Amazon warriors howl at his passing: "It was not the leopard that killed him. Not the buffalo that killed him. It was night. Night that killed him." That -- and everything else. At no time does da Silva understand the irony of his being a slave broker whom the slaving ship captains could trust. We do not follow the slavers to the New World, just see them off at the docks as they begin their grim voyage. The Dahomean kings use da Silva, but profoundly distrust him. When he no longer serves their purpose, they and the whole society in which he lives drive him to the final extremity. There is one link between the life of da Silva and the celebrations of his descendents: The character of Mama Wewe. We see her only at the end of both parts, yet she unifies and justifies Chatwin's bi-partite division. Put this one on the shelf next to Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS.
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