Taha
The African man Charles loved, whose story joins desire to colonial inequality and racist violence.
A life and attachments of his own within the unequal colonial world Charles records.
The book
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeTaha is an African man Charles loves during his colonial years.
His life and attachment exist within unequal imperial structures.
The diaries preserve his importance while also showing the limits of Charles’s point of view.
How the book draws them
- Loved by CharlesHe holds a central place in the older man’s memory.
- Colonially constrainedRace and empire shape the relationship’s possibilities.
- IndividualizedHe matters as more than a symbol in Charles’s history.
- Victim of racist violenceHis death exposes the lethal structure surrounding the romance.
Charles learns that Taha was beaten to death.
The book presents the killing as racially motivated violence.
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