Black Magic (book)

Black Magic (French: Magie noire) is a

1928 book by the French writer Paul
Morand. 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.[1]
 Black Magic

UK 1929 edition (publ. William Heinemann)

Author Paul Morand

Original title Magie noire

Translator Hamish Miles

Country France

Language French
Publisher Éditions Grasset

Publication date 1928

Published in English 1929

Pages 303

Reception
The book was reviewed in The Outlook by
Lucille Fort Hewlings who compared it to
André Gide'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'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."[2]
References
1. Black magic (http://www.worldcat.org/title/
black-magic/oclc/2859706) . WorldCat.
OCLC 2859706 (https://www.worldcat.org/
oclc/2859706) . Retrieved 2015-05-16.

2. Fort Hewlings, Lucille (1929-05-15).

"Frenchmen Among the Negroes". The
Outlook. pp. 106–107.

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