Born in Togo, Kpomassie subsequently left his native Africa and
traveled to the north of Greenland in a journey that lasted ten
years. An African in Greenland, an autobiography that chronicles
his journey, was awarded the Prix Littéraire Francophone
International in 1981, and its English translation was one of The
New York Times’ Notable Books of the Year in 1983. Kpomassie has
written numerous articles and short stories for French
publications.
Al Alvarez is the author of Risky Business, a selection
of essays, many of which first appeared in The New York Review
of Books.
James Kirkup (1918–2009) was a prolific English poet,
translator and travel writer. He became a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Literature in 1962.
"It has something of Candide, with its intrepid hero practising
fearless reverse ethnology. It has something of Kafka’s Amerika,
with its love of the inconsequential, and its mixture of sweet
reason and surprise. . . . Kpomassie is a writer of enviable
and maybe indispensable amiability and serenity." —Michael Hofmann,
London Review of Books
"Was there ever an odyssey like this one, from the palm forests of
Togoland, in Western Africa, to the remote jumble of silence and
ice of northern Greenland? It is a long way in miles, but even
longer in resilience, adventurous persistence and uncanny charm. .
. . Kpomassie’s book contains a catalogue of his impressions,
combined with striking passages of fine writing. The result is the
curious double perspective of a naïve visitor, combined with the
controlled distance of a writer." —Paul Zweig, The New York Times
Book Review
"Kpomassie is indisputably a man of extraordinary charm; he is also
sharp and perceptive and honest—unencumbered by a sense of
obligation to his hosts that might have prevented him from telling
us what they are really like. His honesty, while occasionally
brutal, in the end serves the Greenlanders well: he pays them the
compliment of showing them as they are." —Katherine Bouton, The
Nation
“As a teenager in Togo, Tete-Michel Kpomassie dreamt of
traveling to Greenland after first reading about the Arctic
remote territory in a book. It took Kpomassie eight years and a few
trips throughout Africa and Europe, but he landed on those frigid
shore in the 1960s. By chronicling the Inuits' lifestyles, already
changing by colonialism, Kpomassie puts two non-Western
perspectives in conversation.” —Elena Nicolaou, Oprah Magazine
“This is a classic work of anthropology written by a person who is
clearly and nonchalantly brilliant, picking up foreign languages
the way other people pick up dirty socks, and deploying words like
'bodkin' and 'calcined' in throwaway sentences.” —Molly Young,
Vulture
"A book with cultish standing." —Lonely Planet
"It is, as it sounds, the strangest travel book ever written. One
can only imagine how the appearance of this tall, very black young
African struck the Eskimos of Greenland’s tiny, isolated
settlements. Kpomassie caries the whole thing off brilliantly.
Open-minded, self-assured, adaptable, acutely observant, and
obviously very personable, he is the perfect guide to the Eskimos
and what was left of their culture in the mid-1960s. There is no
trace of cultural condescension in him. He has a sort of
prelapsarian innocence that gives the book great charm. . . .
Kpomassie falls deeply in love with the Eskimos and their land,
thereby accomplishing what must surely be the most astounding act
of cultural assimilation in all of human history. . . . An African
in Greenland is a fascinating book, and I could write about it all
day. It would, of course, be more economical of your time to just
get a copy and read it for yourself, which I urge you to do. . . .
What a wonderful book, to make a person think so much!" —John
Derbyshire, The New Criterion
"Kpomassie’s only formal education consisted of six years of
elementary school, but An African in Greenland reveals him to be a
natural-born anthropologist. The book alternates insights on the
maintenance of incest taboos in the close quarters of the shared
Inuit bed, or on the complicated nature of the six-part Inuit soul,
with more pragmatic notes. . . . The book is also a whopping good
adventure yarn." —Matt Steinglass, The Boston Globe
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