When I saw the cover for my upcoming biography about Charles R. Saunders, I giggled with delight. I think I heard Charles cackle from the beyond. It is so cool and FUN and perfectly captures Charles and my book about him. Giselle said he looks like the coolest wizard who ever lived, which is exactly true. Charles often called Imaro the baddest muthafucker on the planet – I told my publisher this is the baddest muthafucking COVER on the planet.
My entry into his world formally began with my obituary for CBC, which opens, “Those who knew Charles R. Saunders from the outside never would have guessed at the vast universes contained within him.”
That’s exactly what this image captures: his familiar outer face, and a glimpse of the universe within. The image in his glasses is Imaro riding a white rhinoceros into battle on the DAW cover of Imaro III: The Trail of Bohu. Charles uses the word “chipembere” in the book, which is the word the Shona people of Zimbabwe would use. As Imaro moves through Nyumbani, the people and languages change to reflect the real African history and culture behind every page.
Charles famously detested the first DAW cover, which he called “Tarzan with a tan,” but a new artist came on board for books two and three of the DAW run. “I loved the covers of the second two books, which were done by Jim Gurney,” Charles wrote in a letter to a friend. “Imaro is so big he makes that rhino (or should I say chipembere) look like a horse!”
It was cool to see that James Gurney is still creating art, and many of his current images today clearly have roots in this beast.
It will be a hard-cover book and I think this extraordinary image will turn the whole thing into an art work you will want to contemplate. I’ve looked at this cover every day since I first saw it during the summer and have stared at it for as long as thirty minutes uninterrupted.
Here’s the full information from McClelland & Stewart:
To Leave a Warrior Behind
The Life and Stories of Charles R. Saunders, the Man Who Rewrote Fantasy
Book Description
Discover the untold story of Charles R. Saunders, the little known figure who wrote groundbreaking fantasy worlds and redefined an entire genre. Blending biography with a tribute to Saunders’ forgotten literary legacy, To Leave a Warrior Behind uncovers the life of an enigmatic recluse, and the worlds he left behind.
He was the “Father of Sword and Soul”—a sub-genre in fantasy writing, built on Black heroes, steeped in African myth and history. He spun vast worlds and created characters that directly challenged totemic figures such as Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian. He rewrote what fantasy could look like. Yet, when he passed away in Nova Scotia in 2020, few knew the name Charles R. Saunders, his past accomplishments largely forgotten.
Jon Tattrie worked alongside Charles for two years at the Halifax Daily News. He knew him as an imposing figure, a skilful editor, and as an eccentric character, but he wasn’t aware of Charles’ secret life as a literary trailblazer. After hearing about his old colleague’s death, Tattrie reaches out to various people in Charles’ life, and begins his own journey, piecing together two parallel worlds: one of Charles’ tumultuous beginnings as a Black man in America who fled to Canada during the Vietnam War; and the fantasy world of Imaro, the Black hero forced to fend for himself in search of his own life’s purpose.
Part biography of a man adamant to change the way we look at fantasy, part preservation of the influential epic works that have become largely unknown, To Leave a Warrior Behind is Tattrie’s memorial to a larger-than-life figure, an intimate goodbye to a friend, and a remembrance of a writer who should not be forgotten.
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The book will enter the world January 21. I’m working on plans for the launch, which will likely come in February.