Synopsis
A former American slave from Virginia, Tom Molineaux, is a successful boxer in England at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. A series of narrators--Molineaux's trainer, contemporary boxing journalists, his childhood girlfriend--tell the protagonist's story. An exacting account of 19th-century English manners and slang sets the stage for the courageous, yet vulnerable black man in a highly class-conscious society.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1998-04-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 248 pages | | Height: | 9.3 in | | Width: | 6.8 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 19.2 oz |
Publisher's Note
When Captain Buckley "Mad Buck" Flashman, father of the notorious Harry, sees a black American boxer catch a fly in mid-flight, he realizes he has discovered the prize ring's best, and potentially most lucrative, fighter ever. What follows in George MacDonald Fraser's colorful re-creation of Regency England is the powerful, rollicking, and moving tale of Tom Molineaux, a freed slave from New Orleans who challenged Britain's celebrated and undefeated champion Tom Cribb. The "Black Ajax" became no less famous a figure in England than Napoleon - and just as much a threat to its establishment as he boxed his way into legend and created the precedent for modern black prizefighters.
Industry Reviews
The author of the popular "Flashman Papers" series, Fraser has established a reputation as a master of historical fiction. His latest effort, based in fact, chronicles the brief career of a black American boxer in Regency England. Tom Molineaux was a freed slave who challenged England's champion, Tom Cribb, twice. Molineaux finds a patron in Captain Buckley "Mad Buck" Flashman (father of the Flashman of Fraser's novels), and he quickly begins to attract attention, gaining notice even from the Prince Regent. Fraser tells the boxer's sad tale through the reports of various witnesses whose lives intersected with that of Molineaux, revealing the attitudes and prejudices of a raucous society not quite ready to have a black man become champion of England. Fans of historical fiction will revel in Fraser's effortless re-creation of the Regency period, and for those unfamiliar with Regency cant, there is a glossary to explain what phrases like "dicked in the nob" and "pattering the flash" mean. Highly recommended where historical fiction and Fraser's works are popular. Dean James, Murder by the Book, Houston
Darwall
Taking a break from his delightful series about the Victorian scoundrel Harry Flashman, Fraser gives us a superb novel about Tom Molineaux, a freed slave from Virginia who was a boxing sensation in the early days of the sport in Regency England. Fraser's encyclopedic knowledge of 19th-century British mores and slang and his splendid eye for period color have never been put to better use. He tells the story of Molineaux through a series of narrators: Molineaux's trainer and second; contemporary boxing journalists; Flashman's rakish father, who takes up Tom's cause for a time; his childhood sweetheart; a lascivious footman; and others. All of them are characterized with a perfect ear for their particular diction and, for those taken aback by the authentic vernacular, there is a useful glossary. The portrait of Molineaux vain, strutting, childlike, at once hugely courageous and profoundly vulnerable is memorable. Has there ever been a more vivid picture of the thrills and horrors of the early bare-knuckle boxing days, when the sport was at once illegal and a national obsession? For anyone interested in the period, in the place of a black man in a highly stratified society and in a compelling story of courage and ultimate sorrow, this is the book. (Apr.)
Davison
The author of the popular 'Flashman Papers' series, Fraser has established a reputation as a master of historical fiction. . . . [He] tells the boxer's sad tale through the reports of various witnesses whose lives intersected with that of Molineaux, revealing the attitudes and prejudices of a raucous society not quite ready to have a black man become champion of England. Fans of historical fiction will revel in Fraser's effortless re-creation of the Regency period, and for those unfamiliar with Regency cant, there is a glossary. . . . Highly recommended where historical fiction and Fraser's works are popular.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Hughes
Fraser has taken Thomas Hughes's original cowardly bully, Harry Flashman, through ten novels, . . . but in Black Ajax he turns instead to the heyday of Harry's father, Buck Flashman, and imagines him as the patron of the first great black heavyweight prize-fighter, Tom Molineaux. . . . For a writer more associated with the knockabout school of historical fiction, George MacDonald Fraser . . . shows here a genuine feeling for the wretched twilight of Molineaux's career.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Hughes
Fraser's gift for mimicry, his facility in composing riffs in early-nineteenth-century parlance, is on full display. . . . There is much that is lewd, rude, and outright funny here, as well as the substantial research that is typical of all Fraser's novels. It's hard to imagine a fictional account that better conveys the heightened wartime atmosphere of Regency London: the noise and congestion, the wretched poor and preposterously rich at close quarters. . . . But all this is backdrop; it's the efflorescence of pugilism that Fraser exults in.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Krystal
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