Judith Gleason

In Gleason's richly-descriptive novel, we are introduced to Agtime, a beautiful former queen, too intelligent to be tolerated by her dead husband's son, now turned King of Dahomey. She is thus sold into slavery and shipped off to Brazil. The first section of the novel describes her life in Dahomeyan culture, with all its rich ritual and cruel history, following her career down to the Atlantic shore, where she is rowed out to a waiting Brazilian slaver in an open canoe, after having been branded on the breast. The second section of the book is entitled "Middle Passage"; the final section takes place in Brazil. While you can read the novel as a painful journey through exotic cultures and distant times, written in beautiful language, it is something more, a most pleasing, literary work of history and anthropology-in-fiction. What was the ultimate fate of Agtime ? How did she die? The answer is bound forever to the fact that African religion is today alive and well in every Brazilian city and village. The African gods are twinned with Catholic saints and who is to tell which is in front ? How did this synthesis occur? How did African culture come to the New World--Brazil, Haiti, Cuba, the West Indies, and the USA--and become the powerful force that it still is ? Read this book for a deeper understanding of the tragedy of West African history, for one of the great human tragedies. This volume is a perfect companion to Bruce Chatwin's "The Viceroy of Ouidah", concerning the same period and locations, but speaking from the African viewpoint, unlike Chatwin's. Frank Yerby's novel, "The Dahomeyan" too, though not as strong, fits together with Gleason's powerful novel. If you are interested in either West African or Brazilian history, in the religion known as Vodun ('voodoo') with its mythology, or in a generally thoughtful, original novel, read this book. It is one of my favorites of the last 20 years.… (mehr)