KING CALIBAN
His Triumph over the Tyrant Prospero and his Courtship of Miranda
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About the Book
King Caliban presents a fresh and admirable view of Caliban, who manages, with his acquired use of the colonial’s language, to gain his rightful kingship of the island, and Miranda’s enduring love.
King Caliban is a revolutionary version of Shakespeare’s colonial Tempest, following the mock shipwreck, and the scattered travellers on the island. The play views Prospero as a missionary and a despot, who with his technological expertise, exploits the island’s natural resources of airy spirits, using a different staff, a different robe, and a different book. While engaging in personal revenge, left and right, he works his black art under the guise of bringing civilization, language, and salvation to the native he has enslaved and maligned. His pardoning of state criminals paraded as forgiveness, has a typically sham, ulterior motive -- that of making his daughter, Miranda, Queen of Naples -- an aim that is frustrated in King Caliban through Miranda’s revelation of Caliban’s inner worth, the injustice done to him, their shared childhood on the island, and his courtship of her.
About the Author
Victor Sasson grew up in Baghdad. He holds degrees from the University of London and an American doctorate. He has published research studies on Hebrew and Aramaic epigraphic texts in major scholarly journals, and also four novels, a book of essays, two plays, and a memoir of his childhood in Baghdad.