Sacred River
A Novel
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
The reincarnation of a legendary nineteenth-century Caribbean emperor as a contemporary African leader is at the heart of this novel. Sacred River deals with the extraordinary lives, hopes, powerful myths, stories, and tragedies of the people of a modern West African nation. It is also the compelling love story of an idealistic philosophy professor and an ex-courtesan of incomparable beauty. Two hundred years after his death, the great Haitian emperor Henri Christophe miraculously appears in a dream to Tankor Satani, president of the fictional West African country of Kissi, with instructions for Tankor to continue Henri Christophe’s rule, which had been interrupted by “that damned Napoleon.”
Ambitious in scope, Sacred River is a diaspora-inspired novel, in which Cheney-Coker has tackled the major themes of politics, social strife, crime and punishment, and human frailty and redemption in Malagueta, the fictional, magical town and its surroundings first created by the author in The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, for which he was awarded the coveted Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Sacred River is equally about love and politics, and marks the return to fiction of one of Africa’s major writers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This innovative epic by Sierra Leone native Cheney-Coker (The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar) is firmly set in West Africa and features magical realism grounded in native myth. In the fictional capital city of Malagueta, Tankor Satani, a 65-year-old ex-dogcatcher, is inspired to seize power by his potent dreams of Haitian independence leader Henri Christophe. The extravagant, violent, and politically cagey Satani constructs a hilltop mansion he dubs Xanadu to insulate himself from Malagueta's poverty and civil unrest. The pervasive influence of West African legends emerges in Satani's sorcerer-eunuchs, his bizarre dreams, and his theft of a mermaid's golden comb, which magically ensure his good fortune. This sprawling story describes Satani's eventual death, when his "magic plane" crashes into the sea and the mermaid, in the guise of a barracuda, devours him; it also tells of his successor, General Dan Dogg, who, like Satani, enjoys an opulent lifestyle underwritten by the wealth generated by the local diamond industry. The central figure of the latter part of the book is 16-year-old Yeama Iskander, who represents a new generation seeking to effect social change as a brutal insurrection in a neighboring country spills across the border and Malagueta is threatened with destruction. Despite the perils facing the city, Yeama refuses to abandon her homeland for the security of Senegal. Cheney-Coker's sweeping tale climaxes with the "sacred river," the spiritual center of the story, offering Yeama its healing and rejuvenating powers.
