Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Chatwin, (Charles) Bruce - Mary Hope

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MARY HOPE

[The Viceroy of Ouidah is an] extraordinary fictional treatment of the life of a Brazilian slave-trader who ended his days in Dahomey, flamboyant, ruined, flawed, the god-like ancestor of generations of darker and darker-skinned descendants whom the author discovered when he was trying to write a factual history. His information was patchy and he decided to turn the story into fiction, which he has triumphantly done. From early 19th-century Brazil, he follows Francisco Manoel de Silva to Dahomey (now Benin) where the farouche hero sets up a sub kingdom, is patronised and then rejected by the fearsome king, saved by the king's half brother, and dies sadly, surrounded by his teeming offspring forever exiled from the Brazil he longs for.

It is flawed as fiction but has such an obsessional quality, such vigour and exactitude in the description of life beyond conventional boundaries that it is intensely powerful stuff. Chatwin is fascinated by...

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1. Introduction
2. Maurice Richardson
3. Malcolm Deas
4. Hilton Kramer
5. Alastair Reid
6. Eve Auchincloss
7. Brian Martin
8. Mary Hope
9. Victoria Glendinning
10. John Hemming
11. John Thompson
12. Richard Hall
13. Anne DuchêNe
14. Francis King
15. Lorna Sage
16. V. S. Pritchett
17. John Updike
18. Copyright

1. John Updike