7.2 /10 1 Votes
Country United Kingdom Publication date 1980 ISBN 0-224-01820-5 Genre Novel Adaptations Cobra Verde (1987) | 3.6/5 Goodreads Language English Pages 160 Originally published 1980 Page count 160 Publisher Jonathan Cape | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) Similar Bruce Chatwin books, Novels | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Viceroy of Ouidah is a novel published in 1980 by Bruce Chatwin, a British author.
Contents
Summary
Chatwin's novel portrays the life of a fictional slave trader named Francisco Manuel da Silva, who is loosely based on a historical white Brazilian, Francisco Félix de Sousa. He became powerful in Ouidah, on the so-called Slave Coast of West Africa, now Benin, Togo, and parts of the Volta Region in Ghana.
Chatwin was caught up in the violence of a coup in Dahomey (now Benin), where Ouidah is located, when he was researching the book.
Film adaptation
The novel was adapted for the 1987 film Cobra Verde, directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski as Francisco Manuel da Silva.
Reception
The novel received mixed reviews. In The New York Times, John Thompson compared The Viceroy to other about-Africa prose works:
"One could mention Graham Greene's Journey Without Maps or, for a work of the imagination based on somewhat less horrendous events, Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God. That novel of West Africa has violence enough, and cruel superstition too, yet it is suffused with the common humanity of which I find not one dried drop in The Viceroy of Ouidah."
Years later, in a 1999 review of Nicholas Shakespeare's biography of Chatwin, The Guardian described the Viceroy novel as "a rococo piece of candyfloss."