Between the exotic and the erotic: gender relations in foreign lands

In our globalised world, romantic relationships are increasingly transcending national and cultural boundaries. This book by the Togolese literary scholar Kofi Kauffmann Mawusé N'sougan analyses Corinne Hofmann's autobiographical novel *The White Masai* from an intercultural and postcolonial perspective, viewing it as a literary exploration of the erotic connotations of exoticism. N'sougan demonstrates that this novel draws upon stereotypical and clichéd notions of the 'Black person', thereby enabling its exoticist dimensions. Exoticism, imbued with Eurocentrism, is understood in the work as a positive selection of the foreign. In the novel under examination, the Other / the Foreigner is thereby instrumentalised, for these valorising prejudices are aimed at satisfying the self-interest of the European woman, who views the Black man as the 'noble savage'. This is how eroticism arises: the Other / the Foreigner is reduced to his body and is thus regarded as the epitome of the erotic.