Histoire de Louis Anniaba: Roi d’Essenie en Afrique sur la Côte de Guinée: Exeter French Texts

The African prince Anniaba is the first black hero in French fiction.  With his French queen, he also forms the first mixed-race couple.  Based on fact, Historie de Louis Anniaba was first published in 1740 but has never before been reprinted.  The story allows a degree of narrative and geographical fantasy, but the legal context of the period, in this volume brought into play for the first time, throws into relief the author’s free-thinking stance.  In other respects, it is a period piece, full of travel and adventure in Africa, on the high seas, in France and on the Barbary Coast.

 

Anniaba’s relatively fair complexion, impalusable for some, is a mark of his common humanity and of the author’s refusal to accept that everything out of Africa is monstrous.  It is important to rediscover this forgotten text in a world still bearing the scars of racism.

 

This is a volume in the Textes littéraires/Exeter French Texts.  The text, introduction and essential notes are all in French.