A Good Man in Africa

Morgan Leafy is a hapless, misogynistic, overweight, oversexed First Secretary of the British High Commission in Nkongsamba, a rural city in the fictitious African country of Kinjanja. Leafy has spent three years in this corrupt, oil-rich country, the world's seventh-largest importer of champagne. It's the eve of elections taking place on Boxing Day, and the British through Leafy are meddling, crassly, the Duchess of Ripon, the queen's third cousin twice removed, is making an Independence Day visit to the city and there's a dead body on the High Commission grounds that no one dares to move.

By novel's end, sees Leafy, his singed hair resembling an atrocious candyfloss perm and a missing eyebrow covered in an oblong Elastoplast, the show more result of an unfortunate incident involving the problematic corpse, about to bed his boss's wife after failing with his daughter having recently recovered from a dose of gonorrhoea caught from his local mistress. Leafy's personal life is as complicated as Kinjanjan politics.

Boyd, who spent his childhood in Ghana and Nigeria, is unflinching in his critique of British attitudes during early post-Colonial years. In one scene, the Kinjanjan elite are invited to view a film about the British Royal family at play, to remind them "precisely just what it is they didn't possess and why, therefore, they just weren't quite such special people." Such observations place this book in the category of social satires that derided Western, but chiefly British, behaviour abroad.

Whilst I cannot say that I actually laughed out loud I did read this book with a smile on my face as Leafy bumbled his way to the madcap finale. And despite his imperious condescension of almost everybody around him I still found myself rooting for him. Overall I found this an enjoyable farce. show less

(12) This was excellent. I loved 'Brazzaville Beach' and got this book shortly after reading that but it has taken me awhile to get to. This is about a diplomat, Morgan Leafy, who has a post in some African nation that maybe seems like the Congo but it is never really named. Post-colonial instability, corruption, with a mix of superstition, subservience, bugs, heat, and graft. The atmosphere is well drawn and Leafy is such a pathetic character, a true anti-hero yet everyman. We come to see from the initial opening scene how Leafy is caught up in a crisis in which he is trying to cover up his own misdeeds and becomes an unwitting tool for others schemes. We initially go back in time a few months until the narrative catches up with itself show more and rollicks into the hilarious and sad conclusion. Boyd is a fantastic writer.

Boyd has this gift of being able to write the absurd while also making room for poignancy. The Santa outfit, hiding in the bathtub, the pidgin English, Morgan's frizzled widows peak and his outlandish explanations. But he effectively juxtapositions this with descriptions that pluck at your heartstrings a bit with the description of shared human flaws. Morgan's wide sweaty freckled back, Mrs. Fanshawe's gross vast white thighs, the Duchess's sagging breasts, ... and Innocence, jeez. Murray's son - "Dad, why was that man crying" It all makes for an unforgettable reading experience and I remember feeling similarly after I read 'Brazzaville Beach.'

I will definitely look for a few of his other acclaimed novels and will pass this along to friends who appreciate good literature that is actually funny but affecting. Bravo! show less

I laughed (out loud, as if there were any other kind of laugh) several times at the misadventures of Morgan Leafy in post-colonial Kinjanja. As satire-cum-farce this reminded me of Lucky Jim and Black Mischief, with Graham Greene and Tom Sharpe representing its tonal extremes. It's not subtle — a major subplot involves the corpse of a woman named Innocence, struck down by lightning and therefore untouchable, decaying not-so-gradually in the street — but it is satisfyingly cruel and, in the pathetic figure of Leafy, boasts a delightful antihero.

What a brilliant novel! I first read it in the early 1980s, perhaps not long after it was first published, and thought it was marvellous. Thirty years later it still seems just as entertaining, with a dazzling mix of humour and tragedy, with a healthy dose of parody of the overwhelming self-satisfaction and unassailable rectitude of European diplomats in post-colonial West Africa.

Morgan Leafy, the central figure, is a brilliant creation. Dissolute, lazy and prey to rampant frustration, he spends most of his days struggling to get by doing as little as he can get away with. (I wonder why I identify with him so well!) He is, however, a decent man at heart, though for most of the book he finds little opportunity to demonstrate his inner show more qualities.

Life has not gone to plan for Morgan. As the novel opens he is in his third year in Nkongsamba , a quiet region in the hinterland of Kinjanja, an independent West African state that until recently had been under British suzerainty. He works for the odious Arthur Fanshawe who represents all the hidebound attitudes and prejudices that proliferated in the 1970s. Morgan is sinking into ever deeper despair: he is being blackmailed by an ambitious and relentlessly corrupt local politician, the woman whom he had had visions of marrying has just announced her engagement to his younger, better looking junior colleague, and he has contracted gonorrhoea. And then things start to get worse …

Boyd relates the story with his customary pellucid, gripping prose. This was his first novel but he seemed to hit mid-season form almost immediately. Morgan Leafy is not a particularly nice man, but Boyd conjures huge empathy for him as everything seems to go wrong. Corruption abounds. The High Commission is far from blameless in its interventions in local elections, but then most (though not all) of the local politicians are equally opportunistic with an eye on their financial gains rather than the interests of their long suffering electorate. .Overall the novel is exceptionally funny though there are also moments of great poignancy and sensitivity, and even Morgan manages to rise to some occasions and act for the greater good.

This was a fine start to what has proved to be an illustrious writing career. show less

At the start of this novel the main protagonist, Morgan Leafy, is a loathsome creature. A British diplomat serving as First Secretary to the Commission in the fictional West African country of Kinjanja, he is pretty much a caricature of all the worst elements of the role. Racist, selfish, jealous and quite over-bearing. It's a wonder his local mistress can stand to stay with him or he with her after she gives him a nasty dose of gonorrhoea and just at the wrong time too as he's just started going out with Priscilla, the daughter of his boss.

Leafy is also involved with a local politician, Sam Adekunle, and his wife and with elections coming up his boss has charged him with overseeing the British interest for the most favoured party. So show more when he's found in a compromising position by Adekunle, he ends up getting it from both sides. Adekunle wants Leafy to bribe the head of the university as he needs a land deal to go through to help with funds for his election campaign and now he has a hold over Leafy he uses him as a go-between.

The first part of the book sets the scene before then travelling backwards in time to describe how these events came to pass with the whole kit and caboodle ending up in the hands of one Morgan Leafy and by the end of the book you're actually feeling quite sorry for the man. That's quite an achievement in itself by the author and when you throw in some highly amusing scenes as well as some cringe-worthy moments and it all adds up to a fairly decent read. show less

[A Good Man in Africa] - William Boyd.
That Good Man in Africa is Morgan Leafy; sexist, racist, usually drunk and very British who gets to play the hero in the end, but it's all OK because it's satire. The black Africans are either corrupt or stupid or both, while the white British consulate staff are just as stupid, but know when they need to assert their authority. This book comes from a long line of British satire writers on the lives of their hard pushed countrymen who are trying to make sense or make their way in the Dark Continent. Boyd who was educated at Gordonstoun and Oxford follows in the footsteps of successful authors such as Evelyn Waugh, and Kingsley Amis, but Boyd writing his first novel in the 1980's has no excuse in show more treading this well worn path.

Satire as I understand it is the use of humour, irony, exaggeration or ridicule to expose and criticise peoples stupidity or vices. It seems to me that Boyd works very hard to convince his readers that for the most part a small African country that was under imperial rule is just like he says it is. Our hero Morgan Leafy is quite content as long as he has a steady supply of beer and sex and he doesn't have to work too hard or think too hard to keep the supply coming. He is open to corruption, he throws his ever increasing weight around and thinks only of himself. I felt that Boyd wants his readers to have a soft spot for this racist, misogynist. Poor Morgan Leafy with all the weight of the world's troubles on his shoulders largely caused by his own actions is just looking to survive. This is not a bildungsroman or a novel about redemption, the satire does not bite it is just played for the readers amusement, with plenty of sexual titillation.

I suppose you should know what you are getting when British journals like The Times call it "Wickedly funny" or the Spectator 'Splendid rollicking stuff' and the novel won the 1981 Whitbread Literary Award and later the 1982 Somerset Maugham Award. The writing is certainly of a good standard and Boyd furnishes plenty of detail while keeping the story moving along. It is easy to label this novel as just good fun, but good harmless fun I don't think it is, I might have enjoyed this forty years ago, but not now; I almost felt like I needed to take a shower to wash away the underlying sleaze that rises up from this book. 2.5 stars. show less

A comic Heart of Darkness for the post colonial period, mocking much of the pretension of the European in Africa and reminding us that, whether we recognise it or not, Africa's heart (or better said, our understanding of it) is still shrouded in darkness. I ended up grudgingly feeling some sympathy for the struggles of characters I initially held in mild distaste as the author skillfully revealed just how out of depth they were in their African environment. 15 November 2015