grubstlodger 's review for:

Oronooko: The Royal Slave by Aphra Behn

3.0

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Sitting 400-ish years the other end of the novelistic tradition, I couldn’t help myself from wanting to tighten the book in a modern manner.

It’s the story of Oroonoko, a brave prince in Ghana who loves Imoinda. She is made part of the king’s harem but their love affair causes her and a friend to be sold into slavery. Later he is tricked into slavery - but that has nothing to do with the king and Imoinda, it is an unconnected piece of trickery. As a slave, his inherent nobility means that he isn’t treated as one but is one in name. He finds Imoinda as a slave and they get back together and she falls pregnant. Worried about his child being born into slavery, he decides to fight back with tragic consequences.

Were this a modern novel; Oroonoko’s entry into slavery would have been tied up with the Imoinda love story, she would have been a slave on a different plantation to cause more issues and Oroonoko’s life as a slave would have been treated like a slave. I’m not sure the end would have been much changed though, which involves whipping, mutilation and murder - it’s a shocking ending even now.

Many of the most striking parts were the non-novelistic bits. The beginning of the book explains life in Suriname, including the frank description that the English there must be friends with the natives because, ‘ They being on all occasions very useful to us, we find it absolutely necessary to caress ‘em as friends, and not treat ‘em as slaves.’

There are lots of fascinating elements - that armadillos are called armadillys, that the English find the native cooking to be very tasty but too hot and that the Amazon river is only ‘almost as broad as the Thames.’

I did not enjoy the book as such, but I did find it very interesting. I also have a bunch of Aphra Behn in the future, a lot of naughty nuns - I look forward to it.