Imaro by Charles R. Saunders (DAW)
Neuland licht (or Inline) on the cover of the first edition of Imaro. Published by DAW Books in 1981, the fantasy novel written by Charles R. Saunders “may have been one of the first forays into the sword and sorcery genre by a Black author.” [Wikipedia] Imaro is set in the fantasy world of Nyumbani, an alternate Africa. Its eponymous hero has been dubbed the “Black Tarzan”. Saunders died in May 2020, at the age of 73. Locus credits the pioneering Black science fiction writer “as the founder of the ‘sword and soul’ subgenre, combining African history, culture, and mythology with sword-and-sorcery tropes.”
See Rob Giampietro’s essay “New Black Face” (2004) about how Neuland (and Lithos) came “to signify Africans and African-Americans, regardless of how a designer uses them, and regardless of the purpose for which their creators originally intended them”.
The cover art is by Ken Kelly.
The blurb on the back cover is set in center-aligned Goudy Oldstyle.
