The Man-Eaters of Zamboula is regarded as Howard’s most racist tale, in that it was published, was well-received, and depicted blacks in a villainous light. The story begins in the Sword-Maker’s Bazaar of a decadent, polyglot city of Zamboula, whose rulers lived behind locked doors and let the black slaves run about at night kidnapping and eating strangers, and the lower class, and where the mongrel City Guardsmen [police] glared at the white man who did not cower with pointed suspicion. In other words, Howard wrote a story set in Baltimore Maryland, in 2015, where the ruling elite reside in gated enclaves protected by their bully police while the rest of us, like Conan, are left to fend for ourselves.

Howard’s taste for beguiling dark-skinned beauties has not slacked and his jungle fever is on full display, “Conan pulled his eyes back from following a bold-eyed red-lipped Ghanara, whose short slit skirt bared her brown thigh at each insolent step…”

Yes, I, like Conan, saw her yesterday, only at the Noodle-Maker’s Bazaar.

In most of Howard’s stories, blacks are depicted in an even or sympathetic light. But in this novella, Howard sketches the blacks as bestial aggressors of the lowest human order:

“Giant black slaves slouched along.”

Howard also sketches an uninviting portrait of a mixed-race city, where menace is rendered in subtle hues:

“In this accursed city…The babble of the myriad tongues smote on the Cimmerian’s ears.”

“No lantern except the one hanging from the tavern gate.”

“Where great pale blossoms nodded in the starlight.”

In Howard’s hands Zamboula reeks of moral decay, bestial passion, and is trimmed in dark and lurid shadows, against which the stark savagery of the white northern barbarian cuts a line as clean as his sword edge is keen.

To listen to a reading of one of Howard’s best, and most racially charged, adventure stories, try the link below.