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Ourika: An English Translation (Texts and Translations, No 3)
Ourika An English Translation - Texts and Translations, No 3 Author:Claire De Duras Based on a true story, "Ourika" relates the experiences of a Senegalese girl who is rescued from slavery and raised by an aristocratic French family during the French Revolution. Brought up in a household of learning and privilege, she is unaware of her difference until she overhears a conversation that makes her suddenly conscious of her race -... more » and of the prejudice it arouses. From this point on, Ourika lives her life not as a French woman but as a black woman "cut off from the entire human race." As the Reign of Terror threatens her and her adoptive family, Ourika struggles with her unusual position as an educated African woman in eighteenth-century Europe. A best-seller in the 1820s, "Ourika" captured the attention of Duras's peers, including Stendahl, and became the subject of four contemporary plays. Claire de Duras (nee de Kersaint) (1777-1828) fled France after her father was executed during the French Revolution. In London, she married the Duke of Duras, and they returned to France in 1808. "Ourika" was published anonymously in 1823. This edition is translated by John Fowles (The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Magus, etc.). Introduction by Joan DeJean and Margaret Waller.« less