The Dahomean
by Frank Yerby

This is based on Melville J. Herskovits’ 1967 anthropological study: Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom, among others, and with typical Yerby flair and a lot of cribbed Dahomean words — "A man can be executed for merely pinching an ahosi’s behind, Alogba"—He carries on with an infinite variety of questionable rituals. The novel features a superhuman protagonist named Nyasanu, meaning "man among men" although it should really mean "man among women" since Nyasanu ends up with more wives than he can handle and is eventually betrayed and shipped off to America as a slave.