The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi
Arthur Japin, 1997 (Eng. trans., 2000)
Knopf Doubleday
400pp.
ISBN-13: 9780375718892
Summary
“The first ten years of my life I was not black.”
Thus begins this startlingly eloquent and beautiful tale based on the true story of Kwasi Boachi, a 19th-century African prince who was sent with his cousin, Kwame, to be raised in Holland as a guest of the royal family.
Narrated by Kwasi himself, the story movingly portrays the perplexing dichotomy of the cousins' situation: black men of royal ancestry, they are subject to insidious bigotry even as they enjoy status among Europe’s highest echelons. As their lives wind down different paths–Kwame back to Africa where he enlists in the Dutch army, Kwasi to an Indonesian coffee plantation where success remains mysteriously elusive—they become aware of a terrible truth that lies at the heart of their experiences.
Vivid, subtle, poignant and profound, The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi is an exquisite masterpiece of story and craft, a heartrending work that places Arthur Japin on a shelf that includes Joseph Conrad, J.M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro and Nadine Gordimer. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 26, 1956
• Where—Haarlem, The Netherlands
• Education—Kleinkunstacademie
• Awards—see below
• Currently—lives in
Arthur Valentijn Japin is a renowned Dutch novelist.
His parents were Bert Japin, a teacher and writer of detective novels, and Annie Japin-van Arnhem. After a difficult childhood—his father killed himself when Arthur was twelve years old —Japin entered the Kleinkunstacademie in Amsterdam, where he trained as an actor. He was also briefly an opera singer at De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam.
His first novel, De zwarte met het witte hart (1997), translated as The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi, was the story of two Ashanti princes, Kwame Poku and Kwasi Boachi, who were taken from today's Ghana and given as gifts to the Dutch king Willem II in 1837. Based in part on Japin's own traumatic youth, and based on ten years of research in the Netherlands, Germany, Africa, and Indonesia, the book became a bestseller and is considered to be a classic of modern Dutch literature. In November 2007, an opera based on the novel premiered in Rotterdam, with an English libretto by Arthur Japin and music by the British composer Jonathan Dove.
His second book, De droom van de leeuw, (2002), is a novelized version of his relationship with the Dutch actress and novelist Rosita Steenbeek in Rome, where Steenbeek became the last lover of the Italian director Federico Fellini.
His third novel, Een schitterend gebrek, translated as In Lucia's Eyes (2003), was a return to the historical novel, about Casanova's first lover, Lucia, who, he reports in his Memoirs, inexplicably abandoned him in his youth, only to resurface years later as a hideous prostitute in an Amsterdam brothel.
His fourth novel, De overgave, translated as Someone Found, takes the subject of the 19th-century Texas Indian wars, dramatizing the story of the Fort Parker Massacre of 1836, in which a white girl, Cynthia Ann Parker, was taken as a Comanche hostage, later becoming the mother of the famous Comanche chief Quanah Parker.
Japin has also published several volumes of stories. The first two, Magonische verhalen and De vierde wand, were gathered into the omnibus Alle verhalen, (2005). Magonische verhalen was made into the film Magonia by the Dutch director Ineke Smits.
Japin was the author of the Boekenweekgeschenk (Book Week Gift) 2006, De grote wereld, a short novel about a pair of circus-performing dwarves caught in Nazi Germany, which had a record first printing of 813,000 copies. He has won almost every prestigious prize in Dutch literature, including the Libris Prize for In Lucia's Eyes. Japin lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Awards
1990 - Gorcumse Literatuurprijs for De klap van Ediep Koning
1995 - LIRA-prijs for De roering van het kielzog
1995 - Literaire prijs van de provincie Gelderland for De draden van Anansi
1998 - Lucy B. en C.W. van der Hoogtprijs for De zwarte met het witte hart
1998 - Halewijn-literatuurprijs van de stad Roermond for the body of his work
1999 - ECI-prijs voor Schrijvers van Nu for De zwarte met het witte hart
2004 - Libris literatuurprijs for Een schitterend gebrek
2005 - De Inktaap for Een schitterend gebrek
2008 - NS
(Author bio from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi works on us as a novel, thought it makes use of certain documentary devices, letters, journals, etc. There is no conflict here; the diary Kwame sends Kwasi in the days before his suicide is among the book's finest achievemtns. The whole is as seamless in its artistry as it is moving in its emotional investigation.
Times Literary Supplement (UK)
A fascinatingly ambitious first novel...a historically complex, richly empathetic account.... [The book] has an arch, devastating delicacy that conveys its ideas about colonialism with bitter ease....[though] less successful when spelling things out more literally.
Janet Maslin - New York Times
Rich and risky.... A less exact and intelligent writer might have made a sermon out of these facts.... A deeply humane book about a spectacularly exotic subject. It has a spaciousness and stamina, and an unforced sense of history.
Michael Pye - New York Times Book Review
A classic tragedy.... This is a true story, fully and humanly imagined, and that is the measure of Japin’s accomplishment.
San Francisco Chronicle
Dutch singer/actor Japin's debut draws on extraordinary real-life material: in 1837 two young Ashanti princes, Kwasi and Kwame, were taken to Holland, ostensibly to receive a European education, but in fact as peons in a cynical exchange between the Ashanti king (Kwame's father) and the still active slave traders. Kwasi tells the strange story as a gentle, peevish old man living on a failed coffee plantation in Java at the turn of the century. He remembers his jungle boyhood with cousin Kwame, the coming of the Dutch traders and his and Kwame's early years as curiosities at a Dutch school. Later embraced by the royal court, the two went on to college and became offbeat figures in Dutch society, struggling to persuade themselves that they had really found a new life. Kwasi, the more adaptable, cherished a passion for a Dutch princess until she married elsewhere for convenience. Kwame, deeply uneasy at his equivocal role, joined the army and was posted back to Africa where, eventually realizing that he was a mere plaything of the Dutch, he killed himself. Only toward the end of his life is Kwasi aware that he, too, has lived in self-deception. Japin tells the tale with imaginative empathy and, in the case of Kwame, truly powerful poetic re-creation. However, his incorporation of text from authentic 19th-century documents is disconcerting. This is an unusual story that could appeal to an appetite for the odd corners of history, but perhaps is too close to history to please the lovers of literary fiction who would at first seem to be its natural readers.
Publishers Weekly
Based on the true story of two young African Ashanti princes sent to Holland in 1837, this first novel by a Dutch actor/opera singer explores in compelling fashion the themes of race, assimilation, and prejudice. Kwame and Kwasi are sent to Holland ostensibly to be educated, but in reality they are pawns in a deal that allowed for the continued surreptitious trade of slaves ("recruits" in treaty terms). Thrust into the totally alien environment of a Dutch boarding school, the two princes prove to be bright, ambitious learners whose status provides entry into the highest levels of society, where they nevertheless find themselves regarded more as curiosities than as equals. The once intimate cousins choose different paths in attempting to deal with their "separateness"; Kwasi tries his best to assimilate, while Kwame is determined to retain and assert his African-ness. Given our increasingly diverse society, this exploration of the difference between tolerance and of acceptance is both evocative and important. An excellent choice for any academic or public library. —David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, FL
Library Journal
Quietly moving, Japin's novel is a powerful study of displacement and disillusionment. —Kristine Huntley
Booklist
[A] brilliant first novel, a compact epic of the consequences of European colonization of Africa, written by a Dutch Renaissance man who's also a well-known actor and opera singer. Based on the true story of two African princes, cousins who are uprooted from their Gold Coast Ashanti village and sent to Amsterdam in 1837 to be educated, it's a potent dramatization of culture shock, ethnic injustice, and exploitation—revealed by a narrator who only gradually realizes how much has been taken from him. He's the eponymous Kwasi, who writes the story of his life in 1900 while residing on a coffee plantation in Java, following the last of several token appointments granted him by the Dutch government. Kwasi recalls experiences shared with his cousin Kwame, as beneficiaries of a regime eager to retain its rights to a thriving slave trade. Kwasi consents to"blend in," unlike his troubled cousin, whose determination to"stand out" widens the ever-increasing gap between them. The one "assimilates" perfectly to European culture; the other enters the Dutch colonial army, finally returning to Africa, unable—as he had long feared—to live among his people any longer. Japin crystallizes these conflicts in several stunning scenes: episodes at a boarding school, and later at the Dutch court, where the cousins are alternately welcomed and abused; a painful public speech given by Kwasi, in which he loftily criticizes "the religion, customs, and thinking of my forebears"; a long exchange of letters after the cousins are separated for the last time; and particularly a moment of blinding clarity when Kwasi, examining a daguerreotype of himself, sees both "a white man with a black shadow, and a dark man with a white aura ... [and regretfully concludes that] I have been both these men." As artful and moving an analysis of the tragedy of colonialism as we have seen in many years.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi:
1. Talk about Japin's use of imagery—for example, the portrait of the princes, the wounded monkey, and the butterflies in the mine. What do the images signify, and how do they deepen the story's impact?
2. The Dutch title of this work is "The Black Man with the White Heart." Which title do you prefer, English or Dutch? Why might the English publishers have changed the title?
3. How did the 19th-century Dutch manage to get around the prohibition against slavery?
4. How are the two young cousins different from one another? Why did they choose different paths for living in Dutch society—Kwasi wishing to assimilate, to blend in; Kwami to stand out and maintain his African identify. Talk about the consequences of those two choices—how did Kwasi's assimilation and Kwami's separatism end up shaping their lives?
5. Were you surprised at the physical acts of violence that the two young princes met while attending the school in Delft? Are there any parallels to racism in the 21st Century? To what degree does racism still exist today?
6. To what degree is Kwasi, in particular, aware of racism and the barrier against his black skin color?
7. What was behind Kwasi's speech to the students' club in which he repudiates his African origins?
8. Princess Sophie and Kwasi were both outsiders living in royal circles—they didn't belong. What would it feel like to never "belong" somewhere. How would that sense of dislocation shape your identity?
9. How does older Kwasi make fun of the portrait he and Kwami had painted with the major general? What was the message the portrait was intended to convey?
10. What do both Kwasi and Kwami come to understand about their treatment by their Dutch hosts?
11. Years later, Kwame recalls Holland and thinks that "a vast panorama is necessarily finite." When he thinks of the jungles of Africa, however, he writes, "an obstructed view suggests infinity."
12. Kwasi opens the book with this statement:
The first ten years of my life I was not black. I was in many ways different from those around me, but not darker. That much I know. Then came the day when I became aware that my colour had deepened. Later, once I was black, I paled again.
How does this passage reflect the narrative arc of the book? What does Kwasi mean when he says that he "was not black" as a child and that later he "paled again"?
13. How does Kwasi come to discover and define his identity, his soul?
14. Talk about the government mandate regarding "noblesse de peau," which Kwasi finally reads. Were you shocked by its blatancy? Was Kwasi? Or had he come by then to understand the barrier of skin color?
15. Japin frames The Two Hearts, beginning and end, with an older Kwasi reflecting on his life. Why would the author have framed his novel using the voice of an older man?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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