The White Monk of Timbuctoo

(price-clipped) [a nice clean copy, with light wear to the extremities, an old stamped price on the rear pastedown, along with a vintage bookseller's label (Hudson's Book Shop, Detroit); the jacket has a tiny nick at each end of the spine and one more at the bottom edge of the rear panel, plus a diagonal wrinkle at the upper right corner of the front panel]. (B&W photographic plates) An "authorized" biography of Pre Yakouba (born Auguste Dupuis) a "missionary monk [who] followed the first French military column into Timbuctoo in 1895, [where his] power and prestige among the natives became so enormous that he was marked for appointment as Bishop of the Sudan. But instead of becoming bishop, he abandoned his robes, threw off European customs, married a black woman, begot many children, and became the patriarchal father of a tribe." The jacket blurb further claims that at the time he was "the most honored and beloved veteran colonial official in French West Africa" -- but of course it's worth remembering that this is all filtered through the telling of Seabrook, an unreliable narrator if there ever was one -- described in his Wikipedia entry as an "occultist, explorer, traveler, and journalist," and also an alcoholic, a reported dabbler in cannibalism, and from most accounts an all-around horrible human being.

Product Info

Publisher: Harcourt, Brace and Company

Year: (c.1934)

Type: Used

Binding: Hardcover

First Edition

Seller Info

ReadInk

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Country: United States