Salah and His American

With a heady blend of paternalism and Orientalism, this rare 1930s novel offers a glimspe of the nature of race relations in that era. The [missing] front flap of the first edition states that this novel is about "a young negro boy, out of work and stranded, who fastens himself like a faithful dog on an American visiting in Morocco. The man finally engages him as a house-boy, and Salah, with the soul of a slave ready to idolize a kind master, roots himself unbudgingly. He cannot understand that he is a servant for a month, not a lifetime...Salah, with centuries of black Africa in his blood, is finally left behind- equipped to drive a car."