WORDY JUNGLE
STORM AND ECHO, by Frederic Prokosch; Faber and Faber. English: price, 10/6. HE heat thickens, the jungle suffocates, and the mind fills with disgust at the teeming tropics of Africa and the squalor and superstition of its natives. Mr. Prokosch has written in the picaresque vein about Asia and America, and now through his highly individual eyes
we see the Dark Continent. His theme he has stated before, in The Seven Who Fled: "There is only one victory possible for man, that of having lost with a certain dignity of heart ‘and nobility of spirit." The four charactets in this book ate searching for the mysterious Mt. Nagala. What is it? The birthplace of the Negro, God, death? Lost in the undergrowth of the book’s wordy jungle we are never quite sure. All four die on their maddening trek through the Corigo. Only one achieves victory, to die on Nagala, uncorrupted in spirit by the hell he has endured. In Africa the veils of decency are torn one by one from the human soul. Never has the tribal Negro appeated so depraved, with his phallic obsessions and ritual mutilations, and yet seldom has the individual Negro appeared so noble as in the character of Oudangé, the faithful bearer and ancient
warrior of his race.
P.J.
W.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 552, 20 January 1950, Page 15
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218WORDY JUNGLE New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 552, 20 January 1950, Page 15
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