Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
White Spirit

White Spirit

Wing, Betsy
Constant, Paule

Paperback

Series: European Women Writers

Literary Fiction

Publisher Price: $19.95

ISBN10: 0803264410
ISBN13: 9780803264410
Publisher: Univ Of Nebraska Pr
Published: Apr 1 2006
Pages: 182
Weight: 0.50
Height: 0.40 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
After answering a classified ad placed by an import-export company looking for energetic young men willing to take on responsibilities for its African branches--no diploma required--Victor finds himself on The Will of God, a dilapidated boat heading into the heart of darkness as even Conrad couldn't have imagined. With the piquant mixture of hilarity and painful disenchantment characterizing Paule Constant's vision of the colonial novel, White Spirit follows three innocents--Victor; Lola, a mulatto prostitute; and Alexis, who does not know he's a monkey--as they negotiate the perverse system of desires and hatreds on an African banana plantation.

Selling what no one wants or needs, Victor takes delivery of a barrel of mysterious powder promptly christened white spirit for its ability to bleach the black arms of the workers handling the shipment. To become whiter and worthier of love, Lola buys some--and then the rest vanishes. In this nightmarish Africa where colonized and colonizers have each other in a stranglehold, the white spirit unleashes an obsession that merges whiteness with a return to paradise--an obsession that can only end in catastrophe. Through it all, with her characteristic caustic language, fierce irony, and enormous tenderness for human frailty, Constant portrays the ridiculous without ridicule--and, miraculously, sparks a light of hope in the midst of the torment and suffering.

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