About This Book
A first-person narrator recounts a late-night amusement-park visit that culminates in a panopticon show by a troupe of black performers, led by an extremely tall, gaunt man named Abdallah. The account follows his ritualized weapon dance, mounting illness and eventual collapse, and the audience's mixture of laughter, curiosity and indifference as showmen and a female companion try to help. The narrative juxtaposes carnival spectacle, commercial exploitation and bodily suffering, highlighting the social and racial distance between spectators and the ailing performer and the uneasy pity public amusement can conceal.