The crowning achievement of Afro-Colombian author Manuel Zapata Olivella, Chango, el Gran Putas depicts the African American experience from an entirely different perspective--that of the gods who stand over the world and watch.

Ranging from Brazil to New England but centered in the Caribbean, where countless slaves once arrived from West Africa, Chango recounts scenes from four centuries of involuntary displacement and servitude of the muntu, the people. Through the voices of Benkos Biojo in Colombia, Henri Christophe in Haiti, Simon Bolivar in Venezuela, Jose Maria Morelos in Mexico, the Aleijadinho in Brazil, or Malcolm X in Harlem, Zapata Olivella conveys, in luminous verse and prose, the breadth of heroism, betrayal, and suffering common to the history of people of African descent in the Western hemisphere.

Unique to these narratives is the hovering presence of the Orichas, the African gods and messengers whose actions construct a worldview that defies Western logic. And within this pantheon stands Chango, the god of fire, war, and thunder who both curses the muntu for betraying their own kind and challenges them to liberate not only themselves but all of humanity. Chango, the Biggest Badass is a passionate tour de force that seeks to recuperate the values and wisdom of a people subjugated in the European colonizers' headlong rush toward empire, treasure, and modernity.

Readers and critics of postcolonial literatures will relish the opportunity to experience Zapata Olivella's masterpiece in English; students of world cultures will appreciate this extraordinary tapestry, woven from equal strands of myth and history.