A Harlot's Progress Book

Going back to the origins of black fiction in 18th-century slave narrative, A Harlot's Progress tells the story of Mungo, an elderly slave engaged in dictating the main events of his life to the Abolitionist, Mr Pringle, who is "authoring" his autobiography. Unfortunately, the true history of Mungo's life--both as a slave and as an African-keeps on going missing in Pringle's attempts to transform that life into a moral emblem or fable of savage innocence preceding the fall into slavery. In fact, that life refuses to confirm to any of the versions white Europeans--whether in the guise of the painter Hogarth, Mungo's "owners", Lord and Lady Montagu, or Thomas Thistlewood, the captain of the slave ship responsible for "blooding" him, both sexually and otherwise--try and project onto him.Employing a variety of plots and narrative perspectives, Dabydeen explores the instability of the slave's image in European representations of Africa and Africans. However, the idea that fictions are irresolvable and, ultimately, irretrievable, gives way, in the final brief section of the book, to sentiments of love and redemption which are seemingly exempt from the whirl of illusion, myth and ironic fabrication that precedes it. Like the sections on Africa that open the novel, authentic love seems to lie beyond the deconstructions and lies of history, a moment of truth, both comprehensible and shared. --David MarriottRead More