King Lazarus by Mongo Beti (Author)

Like its predecessor, Mission to Kala, Mongo Beti's new novel King Lazarus centres round the changing customs and mores of a Bantu tribe under French administration. The year is 1948: the hereditary Chief of the Essazam clan is, to all appearances, dying. As his life has been one long round of eating, drinking, and nocturnal exercises among his twenty-three wives, this is not, perhaps, altogether surprising. But his illness worries the he is a staunch prop of the European Establishment.