The Coronation of Haile Selassie

by Evelyn Waugh

Published by Penguin for more than fifty years, Evelyn Waugh is one of the greatest satirical writers of the twentieth century. In this irreverent personal account of the crowning of the last Emperor of Ethiopia who inspired the Rastafarian religion he makes full use of his comic genius, brilliantly capturing the bureaucracy, lunacy and passion of a country gripped by coronation fever. Extracts from Remote people (1931).

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Ethiopia, Travel

57 pages, Paperback

First published June 5, 2005

About the author

Evelyn Waugh's father Arthur was a noted editor and publisher. His only sibling Alec also became a writer of note. In fact, his book “The Loom of Youth” (1917) a novel about his old boarding school Sherborne caused Evelyn to be expelled from there and placed at Lancing College. He said of his time there, “…the whole of English education when I was brought up was to produce prose writers; it was all we were taught, really.” He went on to Hertford College, Oxford, where he read History. When asked if he took up any sports there he quipped, “I drank for Hertford.”

In 1924 Waugh left Oxford without taking his degree. After inglorious stints as a school teacher (he was dismissed for trying to seduce a school matron and/or inebriation), an apprentice cabinet maker and journalist, he wrote and had published his first novel, “Decline and Fall” in 1928.

In 1928 he married Evelyn Gardiner. She proved unfaithful, and the marriage ended in divorce in 1930. Waugh would derive parts of “A Handful of Dust” from this unhappy time. His second marriage to Audrey Herbert lasted the rest of his life and begat seven children. It was during this time that he converted to Catholicism.

During the thirties Waugh produced one gem after another. From this decade come: “Vile Bodies” (1930), “Black Mischief” (1932), the incomparable “A Handful of Dust” (1934) and “Scoop” (1938). After the Second World War he published what is for many his masterpiece, “Brideshead Revisited,” in which his Catholicism took centre stage. “The Loved One” a scathing satire of the American death industry followed in 1947. After publishing his “Sword of Honour Trilogy” about his experiences in World War II - “Men at Arms” (1952), “Officers and Gentlemen” (1955), “Unconditional Surrender" (1961) - his career was seen to be on the wane. In fact, “Basil Seal Rides Again” (1963) - his last published novel - received little critical or commercial attention.

Evelyn Waugh, considered by many to be the greatest satirical novelist of his day, died on 10 April 1966 at the age of 62.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_W...

Reviews

[Daren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Penguin 70 collect two excerpts from Evelyn Waugh's Remote People, a book that I read around 10 years ago and enjoyed. I remarked in my review of that book that the description of the Coronation was fairly minimal, and it seems the rest of the book was superior to that section.

Collected here in an excerpt, the Coronation read quite well. Waugh was quite descriptive and provided a little background and explained who all the main characters were. He shared a fair amount of behind the scenes logistics and gossip from the other journalists. I probably enjoyed this excerpt more this time around.

The second much shorter excerpt was one I would consider poorly selected. It had little context, not even sharing his location in Africa at the start, was principally a moan about boredom and whether boredom at home in England would remind him of his journey, or whether the journal he kept would read as boring when at home. In the end it turns out he was on a 4 day train journey to Djibouti, missed his connecting steamer and then explained some (fairly boring at it turned out) logistics in finding a new ship.

3 stars - albeit would have been 4 stars but the second excerpt dragged it down!

[Adam Marischuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

After rereading Scoop over the weekend I decided to reread this little gem.

In 1930 Evelyn Waugh was sent as a correspondent to the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie and this little book is the product of his reporting along with some after-the-fact reflection on the journey.

His insights are, as always, compelling and comical. The coronation itself is but a small part of the booklet and is more of an excuse to reflect on the incongruity of the entire spectacle. For it was a spectacle. Part African tribal ruler, part inheritor of one of the oldest civilisations and cultures on earth, part modernising nationalist, part Asia/African/Arab despot (Ethiopia really is axial), tracing his lineage back through Menelik to Solomon, even termed the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Haile Selassie (Power of the Trinity) was a man larger than life. His coronation was similarly larger than life, even if in a city (Addis Ababa 'The New Flower') still less than fourty years old.

After all, there really was something there to report that was quite new to the European public; a succession of events of startling spectacular character, and a system of life, in a tangle of modernism and barbarity, European, African and American, of definite individual character. It seemed to me that here, at least, the truth was stranger than the newspaper reports.

The corontation itself is the backdrop to Waugh's themes of journalism and travel (also exceedingly evident in Scoop, two things he seems to have despised. Those themes, long with all the superficial spectacle (not of the Ethiopian culture) of the desperate aping of European and American cultures, themselves void of the substance they once contained, is ripe for mockery. Squeezed between the first and second world wars, Waugh thought that Ethiopia had little to learn from Europe or America at that time. The Italian invasion, Second World War, Cold War, militray juntas and famines would all prove Waugh and Selassie right.

Here is a link to the only footage of the coronation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qlB8...

[Jamie is · Rating 1 out of 5]

well. the first time i read this, i had no idea that it was a satirical account, and i dismissed it as being a primary source document from an utterly imperialist perspective. even now that i realize it's intent, it still seems rather racist. anyone want to take this off my hands?

[Suneeta · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was like reading an essay, short as it was. I enjoyed his observations and I could totally feel the dust and languid time. It was a strange era and even now, there is still that struggle in non western countries to be seen as 'civilised' in the eyes on westerners and to maintain our culture and traditions, hopefully less so now. As a non western native, I still did not take anything personally, it was quite accurate, funny and a little bit melancholy maybe...
What did strike me was his grouses on the shameless media resorting to fantasy writing in order to get the scoop and the gossip mongering...which have unfortunately only grown more prevalent today.
About the politics, I don't know enough but what is in this novella is enough to give one the sense of that changing times through the eyes of an observer.

[Rodeweeks · Rating 2 out of 5]

A rather boring and disappointing book; was it not for the last few pages where the author describes how bored he was with his stay in Ethiopia I would've given the book one star. My main interest in the coronation of Haile Selassie is Rastafarianism which was established in the same year. The name Haile Selassie, incidentally and most interestingly, means "Power of the Trinity". There is a small piece on Ethiopian Orthodox ritual in the book, but it comes down to the fact that the professor who are supposed to be an expert on the subject understood little about what was going on. Even on the main subject of the book there is not much historical value except for the smallest glimpse.

[Caitlin Macleod · Rating 4 out of 5]

A colourful account of the coronation of Haile Selassie and the events surrounding it. It's a product of its time with a colonial/imperial tone which is distasteful to the modern reader but Waugh writes with humour and wit, mocking characters of every ethnicity and reducing pomp and ceremony to absurdity.

[Mike Gioia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Waugh has never disappointed me.

[Nhlamulo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful

[John Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great and funny read about the chaos and carnage of the coronation.

[Coenraad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Waugh combines the eye of the journalist and the eye of the novelist in this report about Selassie's coronation as emperor in Ethiopia. Some may dismiss his comments as coming from a European who does not understand or appreciate local custom, but his observations are uncomfortably detailed. It's time to read his novels ...

Waugh se joernalistieke blik op die kroning van die keiser van Ethiopië klink dalk soos die waarnemings van 'n oorkritiese Europeër, maar sy waarnemings is ongerieflik gedetailleerd en laat my nuuskierig oor sy romans.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were a few laughs but this is accidentally the second book I read this month about a European's trip to Egypt and the cultural differences were less amusing the second time around. Luckily, the book included this gem: "It seems to me that a prig is someone who judges people by his own, rather than by their, standards; criticism only becomes useful when it shows people where their own principles are in conflict." Words to live by.

[Alex Marriott · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this one passed me by. Went in blind, came out confused.

[Ian McHugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful. A beautifully written, hilarious, and deatiled account of Haile Selassie's coronation in 1930. Great travel writing and an insight into 1930s journalism.

[Aklila Kedan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the first Rastafari book I read. Great inspiration

[Lapis Lazuli]

It was written in the 1930's, it see's one man perspective the author. It forgets to embrace the other side, except for mocking and criticizing a different culture rather Evelyn Waugh's. You can easily sense the discrimination and prejudice. Worst read for modern civilization or should I say where the world is trying to go.