[The Viceroy of Ouidah shows that] Chatwin has a gift for remarkably vivid imagery: 'Virgins were broken at Simbodji with the ease of bursting seedpods', and on the way to Dahomey, 'women pointed up a tree to where a crucified man croaked for water in a library of sleeping fruit bats.' Reading Chatwin's descriptions of life in Brazil and West Africa is like reading the early history of Greene-land. It is a sad, barbaric, decadent story told beautifully and brilliantly. Admirers of Conrad and Malcolm Lowry will relish it: and to most palates, it is curiously original, like 'the shock of aguardiente on the tongue'.

Brian Martin, "Slave Coast," in New Statesman (© 1980 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), Vol. 100, No. 2590, November 7, 1980, p. 29.