Charles R. Larson (1938–2021)

1978. Concerning three white people in West Cameroon in the late 60s. Hunter, a 37-year-old American entomologist, is there doing field research on spiders. He chances to move next door to a British colonial nymphomaniac, Myrna, and her cuckold husband, Phillip, a diplomat. Hunter is extremely short, 4'7", and a virgin, if you don't count the African women he has paid for sex, which clearly, no one in the book does. The characters have an astonishing lack of regard for the Africans around them, seeing them as servants, or backwards people in need of help in becoming civilized. Hunter becomes attached to his houseboy, Ignatius, an Ibo refugee, from Nigeria, where there is a civil war going on. He wants to help Ignatius, but ends up by getting him deported back to Nigeria. Then Hunter dies mysteriously in the mountains while doing his field research. The book is good in that it doesn't try to offer easy answers to the complex problems it explores. I feel like the nymphomania and sex part was probably thrown in to make it sell. The two subjects seem so unrelated. Hunter's character is fully developed, but there's no explanation of why Myrna is the way she is, as if the author didn't really care to explore the psychology of the woman. I think he just put it in to get people to read his book about African politics. I would have rather read a book that was just concerned with the African politics and spent some time developing African characters. The message seemed almost to be that white people can't do any good in Africa.… (mais)