Artistcally, Camara's novel displays many of the weaknesses of a young novelist's first work: too often lush images do not equate character development, enthralling scenes seem to be written for themselves without significantly contributing to the novel's overall construction or character development, and the conclusion seems to surrender to his inability to have a clear (moral or ideological) intention behind the very problematic quest of the hero Clarence. In significant ways, I doubt that Camara had a clearly articulated or organic vision for the novel or the main characters: one increasingly recognizes the colonizer's satiric portrait, but the depictions of the major African figures seem even more dismissively caricatured. Ultimately, this novel sits uncomfortably between a colonized and a nationalist mentality, between the coopted view of a Sekyi and the mature nationalism of Soyinka's great novel "The Interpreters." Granted, from an African point of view, Camara is seeking to explore the very unsavory history of a people's colonization, if not their romance with the colonizer's image, but Achebe does it much more astutely in "Arrow of God," but both pale in comparison to Cheney-Coker's stunning epic "The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar."

This book is a wild trip. The main character is a white French man, living in an unidentified African setting (although the author must have been inspired by his Guinean background), who is totally broke. We don't know anything about his backgrounds, his reasons for being in Africa, or his prior professional occupations. Rejected by the French community, he is bummed. To get out of his misery, he wants to meet a mysterious African king, and apply for a position as advisor at the court. In his quest to find the king, the white man gives up his 'white' identity, and gets in touch with a variety of weird and fascinating characters: an old griot, two annoying boys, a mad village priest. During his journey, 'regular' situations rapidly degenerate into eery hallucinations.

One of the things I especially liked in this breathtaking literary masterpiece was that Camara Laye didn't emphasize human weaknesses of a white oppressor (like Oyono enjoys doing, although I like Oyono a lot); Laye didn't try to denounce Colonialism as a system either, like Cheikh Hamidou Kane or Pramoudya Ananta Toer have done (quite well, of course) - I think that a novel is not the most suited platform to do that: characters quickly tend to become boring academic abstractions rather than interesting people and the literary power of the work suffers. Instead, Laye gradually "forgets" the whiteness of his main character, emphasizing the humanity of all players.

Anyway, Camara Laye's "The radiance of the king" (I read the original French "Le regard du roi" - I can only hope the translation is just as good) is a truly unique book in style and content. Definitely a must-read!

The title says it all. According to the essay writers in this book, America practically descriminates worse now than it did before the civil rights movement. Sure, the world is not perfect, but from the the words of these people, you would think that blacks were still being actively and severly descriminated against. Of course, there are no alternative views (besides common sense), so I again call this book what it really is, typical liberal nonsense.

This book was great...Ignore terse comments from others...

I like to think that in this world there is a difference between being mean and doing mean things. Just because someone might do something that wasn't nice, doesn't necessitate calling them mean. Granted, there are mean people out there, but this book leads you to believe that anytime someone makes a wrong choice, or expects obedience to rules, they are mean. True, when parents yell, they aren't being nice. But most parents aren't mean, they just lose their temper, like most other people do, at times in their life. When you expect your child to eat good food, go to bed, clean their room, etc., that is definitely not being mean. I don't think a book of mean people should be written at all (we don't need more negative in this world), but if it is going to be written, write it about truly mean people. In other words, I don't think this book ought to have been made, let alone be read.

I am very disappointed in this book. It is not appropriate for children of any ages. This book portrays teachers, mothers, friends, siblings and grandparents as mean people because they have expectations of the child.

When I read this book to my 4 year old son, he looked at me and said "Mommy you are mean because you make me eat green beans".
(A true fact from the book). I don't think it's appropriate for children to see caring adults as mean because they are trying to guide children into making good decisions.

I suggest you check this book out from the library or borrow from a friend should you think you want this book. A total disappointment!

I borrowed this book from the library and after one reading, I put it away so that my kids couldn't find it. I agree with the other reviewers that the definition of "mean" used in this book is too broad. Maybe it was written so that you could discuss whether something was truly mean with your children, but try discussing subtleties such as that with a three-year-old. My six-year-old saw it as vindication of her calling me mean when I get her out of bed in the morning to go to school. I kept waiting for a page to come up saying that just because someone asks us to do something we don't want to do, that doesn't make them mean. That page never came.

I had to read one chapter out of this book for my English class. One chapter is too many.

dear sir or madam,

i am writing you to ask for your mailing address because i want to buy a Max notes on 'SULA'(Toni Morrisson), by Anita Price Davis.
i want your address in order to send you its price.
in looking forward to hearing from you, would you like to accept my great respect.