The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye - review

Think of narratives set in Africa written by European writers, and the natives are seen either as picturesque parts of the scenery or as symbols of the otherness of the "dark continent", the cultures they inhabit barbaric and hostile. This revelation of a novel by the Guinean Camara Laye transforms that perspective. Although its central character – Clarence – is a white man, he is penniless and has been ostracised by his fellow Europeans after losing to them at cards. We meet him after he has, literally, sold the clothes off his back. Desperate to gain an audience with the king and some kind of employment, he comes across a beggar and two mischievous boys. Clarence's predicament and misadventures are knowingly Kafkaesque, both funny and nightmarish. Laye at first gives us the Africa that the white man expects – naked, teeming and incomprehensible. But as Clarence is gradually stripped of every attribute of his Europeaness, finally being sold into the royal harem, he at last comes to understand his place.