The Viceroy of Ouidah

Bruce Chatwin's novel follows Francisco Manoel de Silva, a destitute Brazilian who crosses the Atlantic to the Kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa. His purpose is straightforward and brutal: to trade in enslaved people and build a fortune. Dahomey, a powerful state on the coast of what is now Benin, was one of the principal sources of the transatlantic slave trade for centuries, and Ouidah was its main port of departure. Manoel arrives as an outsider with little standing, but his ambitions quickly outpace even his own expectations.

As Manoel rises to control the slave trade at Ouidah, the title of viceroy becomes both a mark of power and a trap. The wealth he accumulates and the authority he holds over the port do not shield him from the corrosive reality of his enterprise. Chatwin traces the slow unraveling of Manoel's grip on his own mind as the violence and instability of daily life in Dahomey close around him.

The story draws on the historical figure of Francisco Félix de Souza, a Brazilian slave trader who operated from Ouidah in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Chatwin visited Ouidah while researching the book, and the novel reflects his characteristic attention to landscape, movement, and the strangeness of displaced lives.