Alphonse Daudet & The Phenomenology Of Pain

  Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897), novelist, playwright, and journalist, contracted syphilis at the age of 17 years, shortly after arriving in Paris in 1857. Syphilis was the HIV of the 19th century. Literary men such as Baudelaire, Flaubert and Maupassant were all afflicted and syphilis was central to Ibsen’s Ghosts and of peripheral importance in Doll’s…

Brazilians in Lagos

Candido Esan da Rocha was the richest man in Lagos when I was a boy. I lie! When my mother was a girl. He was reputed to own a horse drawn carriage that took him across "Gada" (sic) bridge. It was always unclear whether "Gada" was a corruption of "Carter" or "Girder". Candido lived at…