''Black Magic'' () is a 1928 book by the French writer

Paul Morand Paul Morand (13 March 1888 – 24 July 1976) was a French author whose short stories and novellas were lauded for their style, wit and descriptive power. His most productive literary period was the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s. He was m ...

. It focuses on Morand's travels in Sub-Saharan Africa and his encounters with African cultures, which he admires. The book was published in English in 1929, translated by Hamish Miles and with illustrations by Aaron Douglas.

Reception

The book was reviewed in '' The Outlook'' by Lucille Fort Hewlings who compared it to

André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French writer and author whose writings spanned a wide variety of styles and topics. He was awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gide's career ranged from his begi ...

's ''Travels in the Congo'', which was published in English around the same time. Hewlings wrote: "If two Frenchmen had not happened to publish books about the negro at the same time, no one would have been so hard-hearted as to have subjected the work of Paul Morand (discussed below) to the ordeal of comparison with that of André Gide. But it happens that nothing could illustrate better than do these two books the difference between the attitude toward the negro of the versatile, up-to-the-minute but neither before nor after it journalistic mind (Morand) and the philosophical, highly cultured mind (Gide). Both men are negrophiles. But Morand is the raucous emotional follower of the Harlem cult; Gide, the intelligent critic of primitive culture, the temperate admirer of primitive virtues." Hewlings continued: "''Black Magic'' will be interesting to readers of

Bruno Frank Bruno Frank (June 13, 1887 – June 20, 1945) was a German author, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and humanist. Biography Frank was born in Stuttgart. He studied law and philosophy in Munich, where he later worked as a dramatist and novelist ...

's brilliant ''The Persians Are Coming'', for Morand presents in Congo an example of the African out of America whose primitive appeal to anemic Europe is breaking down its civilization. This theory is further upheld by the drawings of Aaron Douglas when he gives us those pale shadowy figures dancing before a symbolic background. Pale arms raised in supplication to an African god that magnetizes decadent Europe after the scourge of war. Aaron Douglas knows his own people and his drawings are in sharp contrast to the deliberate violence of Morand's prose."

References

External links

Full text of '
at Internet Archive
Full text of ''Black Magic''
(1929 English translation) at HathiTrust Digital Library 1928 non-fiction books Books about Africa Éditions Grasset books French travel books French-language non-fiction books Books by Paul Morand {{africa-studies-stub