Impressions of Africa
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The first of Roussel's two major prose works, Impressions of Africa is not, as the title may suggest, a conventional travel account, but an adventure story put together in a highly individual fashion and with an unusual time sequence, whereby the reader is even made to choose whether to begin with the first or the tenth chapter.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A group of wonderfully talented castaways held captive by an African potentate undertake elaborate stage productions in this ingenious exercise by experimental French author Roussel (1877 1933), first published in 1910 and newly translated. Washed ashore in a fictional equatorial African kingdom run by Emperor Talou VII, the passengers a historian, an aging Russian ballerina, a French falsetto, a sharpshooter, a pyrotechnics engineer, and the narrator (among others) are held in captivity, awaiting ransom and release. After witnessing the emperor's parade, showcasing marvelous feats of artifice, endurance, and torture, they begin to enact their own theatrical productions so that each captive might "distinguish himself through either an original work or a fabulous demonstration." The emperor's numerous children also play key roles. Clever devices are built by the engineers, the chemist, and the sculptor; Romeo and Juliet is artfully staged; and prizes are awarded. Tales within tales of Talou's ancestry abound in this demanding nonlinear narrative, as dryly descriptive as it is wondrously absurd.
