Product Description

Henderson has come to Africa on a spiritual safari, a quest for "the truth." His feats of strength, his passion for life, and, most importantly, his inadvertant "success" in bringing rain have made him a god-like figure among the tribes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #398573 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Customer Reviews

A Great Book that's Fun to Read
This book proves that great writing can be readable. I read this novel for the first time over twenty years ago, several times in between, and it was just as wonderful last week. You laugh, you cry, you empathize. If you're tired of beach books, but also weary of pseudointellectual book snobs who tell you that prose must be labyrinthine to be literature, and that laughable isn't laudable, take this book on vacation and share it with a friend.

Leaving the existance of becoming for existance.
One of my personal favorites. An inspiring novel that will strike a chord in the heart of anyone who has felt in need of something greater in their lives than themselves, Henderson the Rain King is a hectic journey of one man through not only the world, but life and, perhaps most importantly, his own soul. Henderson is constantly in a process of becoming in his own mind, and in his fervor to try and metamorphasize into a type of finished being, he fails to notice that through his evolution he is achieving his goal of simply existing. He is lovably egocentric; existing as the sun of his own universe while striving to gain an orbit of his own. He uses his wives to try to fill some empty spot in his existance, professing over and over again his love for his current wife, with little notice or mention of any real depth or desire that she may possess, speaking only of her beauty and creating a view of the female gender that smacks of Hemingway. Henderson's deficiency is one of the soul, and enlightenment is the only path which will bring him peace. He possesses a jaded love of life, in so much as he has experienced enough horror in the world that he cannot look upon it in wide-eyed wonder, but is struck profoundly by the sights and moments in life which are filled with rough hewn and genuine beauty which do inspire in him a sense of awe. It is these moments and spaces of depth within his soul which make his dark optimism for life so endearing. He is, as he himself says, a creature constantly becoming, yet it is through this constant evolution that he reaches his goal, finds peace, and fulfills the "I want"s. He is a man not of thought but of action, and it is only from within himself that he may realize that it is only through perpetual becoming that Henderson the Rain King may exist.

The emperor's new clothes..
A case of... methinks?
Occasionally genuinely amusing and unique in its approach, but more often than not obtuse and vague in its intentions. A real struggle to finish. Has dated greatly in comparison to the Roths and Updikes of the same period.