Trapped In an African Dreamland

Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf

The mysterious bounty hunter known only as Tracker sits awaiting execution. We don’t know what he’s done, or whether his condemnation is justified. We only know a holy man named Inquisitor has come to take his final confession. Weary of life and steeped in blood, Tracker has only one power left: to tell his story in whatever way pleases him best. So Tracker launches into a lengthy, detailed yarn of violence in colonial East Africa.

Man Booker Prize-winning novelist Marlon James’ fourth novel, and first fantasy, brims with promise. His mix of realism and magic, of pre- and post-colonial influences, of this world and the next, promises a story rich in symbolism, commentary, and wizardry. You can appreciate his tale of struggles in the early African diaspora, or if that’s too political, you can enjoy his cool monsters. But you can’t help noticing it takes forever to make any progress.

Born between city life and country tradition, Tracker straddles two worlds, occupying neither. Without a sponsor versed in his people’s customs, he’s never undergone adulthood rites. Thus his kinfolk see him trapped in perpetual adolescence; he sees himself unhindered by laws and superstition. (He’s an unreliable narrator, so decide for yourself.) He works for whoever can afford his highly specialized services, and has become highly skilled in rationalizing away his complicity in his employers’ crimes.

James’ storytelling possibly reflects his Caribbean upgringing, steeped in the same storytelling heritage also visible in Edwidge Danticat or Diane Wolkstein. One suspects, reading Tracker’s confession, that there’s a kernel of truth beneath his windy legerdemain, but that he’s spinning a tale, seeking to thrill and horrify an audience. Tracker clearly dislikes Inquisitor, and the official authority of state and religion that he represents; but he’s also desperate for this perceived father figure’s overdue approval.

Tracker’s story begins with a lengthy novella of his youth, his initiation into tribal warfare, and his relationship with the shapeshifter Leopard. Tracker learns his people’s ways later in life than most, and explains his lessons to Inquisitor. These lessons include myth and ritual, but also ceremonies of blood purity which Tracker, prematurely cynical, regularly disrupts. When his people discover he’s been preserving the impure and the tainted, his own kinfolk drive him violently away.

Marlon James

After this purge of delayed innocence, Tracker gets into his real confession. Residing in a city reminiscent of mythical Timbuktu, Tracker survives by on wits and his preternatural ability to find anything lost. Kings and potentates hire him to prevent wars, while princesses and concubines manipulate him to start wars. He rushes profligately through successions of lovers he doesn’t love, mostly but not entirely men. His shield of cynicism doesn’t entirely conceal his pervasive self-hatred.

A slave trader hires Tracker to recapture an escaped boy he considers particularly valuable. This isn’t Tracker’s first time working with slavers; he takes particular care to avoid ever doing anything that would require him to think about the morality of his actions. These aren’t his people, after all; he has no people, not really. But mounting evidence begins to suggest that this slave trader, both despised and admired, has connections more than merely natural.

On the one hand, James pushes Tracker though situations which reveal that Africa, the homeland Tracker partially longs for, is riddled with moral compromise and venality. (James, who has written about Bob Marley and Rastafarianism, reputedly left Jamaica to escape omnipresent homophobia.) Tracker desperately wants Africans’ approval, even Inquisitor’s, even the rich, corrupt slave trader’s. But, working for the people’s richest, most desperate citizens, he’s seen wickedness he cannot ignore, sins which burn his soul.

On the other hand, James has created such a rich, detailed backstory that he needs to share all of it. Eager to keep Inquisitor present and listening, Tracker keeps spinning his tale in degrees of detail that quickly go from lush, to overgrown, to tedious. I found myself hundreds of pages into a very thick book, pushing through yet more picaresque scenes that go nowhere much, and realizing: holy cow, he’s still engaging in exposition!

Apparently James crafted an opulently detailed story bible, then felt compelled to include everything in the text. Everything he’s written is so beautiful, but there’s so much that the beauty becomes an impediment to motion. I wanted to love this book, but nothing keeps happening, and I’d set down the book frustrated, again. One day I set it down and couldn’t bring myself to pick it up again. Maybe that’s everything you need to know.