"Like Rome, Nkongsamba was built on seven hills, but there the similarity ended. Set in undulating tropical rain forest, from the air it resembled not"Like Rome, Nkongsamba was built on seven hills, but there the similarity ended. Set in undulating tropical rain forest, from the air it resembled nothing so much as a giant pool of crapulous vomit on somebody's expansive unmown lawn. Every building was roofed with corrugated iron in various advanced stages of rusty erosion, and from the window of the Commission -- established nobly on a hill above town -- Morgan could see the roofs stretch before him, an ochrous tin checker-board, a bilious metallic sea, the paranoiac vision of a mad town planner."
Morgan Leafy is the protagonist of this comedy set in the fictitious town of Nkongsamba, state capital of the Mid-West region of Kinjanja, West Africa. As the second in command to the Deputy High Commissioner, he occupies what could be considered an important post in Her Majesty the Queen's diplomatic service, if only Nkongsamba could be considered a posting of any consequence. As the story begins, Leafy's many trials are just beginning, with the announcement that his new assistant, just recently arrived for the UK to give a helping hand, has gotten engaged to his boss's daughter, which he himself had had high hopes of marrying. This is only a minor setback though, because there are more pressing matters to attend to, mainly the business of bribing a high official, a task which he's been blackmailed into taking on, and also getting rid of the body of a local woman recently hit by lightning, which her compatriots absolutely defend anybody from touching for fear a local wrathful deity will take offence. Caught between a boss who uses him to take care of any and all unpleasant and humiliating tasks he can come up with and a megalomaniac local politician who threatens to reveal his most compromising secrets, not to mention the amorous attentions of the politician's wife, and a nice dose of ghonorrea passed on to him by his local girlfriend, Leafy's trials and tribulations truly make for a comical read as he tries to extricate himself from a mess that just keeps getting more complicated and unpleasant with every move he makes.
I'm not altogether sure what to make of A Good Man in Africa. It was certainly entertaining, and I guess I should take into consideration that it was William Boyd's first published effort (for which he won both a Whitbread and a Somerset Maugham award), and also that it was hardly a story I could expect to end with all loose ends perfectly tied up and neatly tucked in. While this book certainly works well as high comedy, I couldn't help but feel a slight discomfort about the way in which the locals are depicted as either unscrupulous power hungry manipulators or superstitious simpletons content to live in squalor and stinking decay, but in all fairness, all the characters in this biting satire receive evenhanded treatment as unlikeable individuals, all the better to reflect Leafy's own cynical view of humanity, which he may or may not be forced to reconsider by novel's end. 4.5 stars, which means I will most probably give it another reading or two sometime. ...more
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