King Comus - by William Demby (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Past and present collide in this posthumous, semiautobiographical masterpiece, which tells the stories of two Black World War II servicemen, their white commanding officer, a famous gospel singer, and an enslaved man making his escape in the early nineteenth century.

In the present day, a Black American expat to Rome called D. reconnects with his former Army friend Tillman and their former commanding officer Joe Stabat to organize a gospel summit for the singer Little Antioch. In the 1940s, as D. becomes enmeshed in Tillman's large and boisterous family, Tillman recounts the story of his fabled ancestor King Comus. And in the early nineteenth century, master musician King Comus embarks on a grand journey to freedom.

William Demby, author of the "masterpiece" Beetlecreek (Kirkus Reviews), employs a cinematic style in this time-bending tale of survival and kinship, which weaves elements of the neo-slave narrative and Afrofuturism into a panoramic vision encompassing the forces of empire, race, gender, and religion. The product of 20 years of literary labor, King Comus was completed shortly before William Demby died in 2013 and was subsequently published by Ishmael Reed in 2017.

About the Author

William Demby was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on December 25, 1922 and attended college in Clarksburg, West Virginia, before enlisting in World War II and serving in Italy. He graduated from Fisk University in 1947 then moved abroad to Rome, where he spent the next two decades working as a novelist, journalist, and script translator and screenwriter for the Italian cinema. In the late 1960s, Demby joined the faculty at The College of Staten Island, dividing his time between the United States and Italy. His works include Beetlecreek (1950), The Catacombs (1965), Love Story Black (1978), and King Comus (2017). In 2006, he was the recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. He died in Sag Harbor, New York, in 2013.