THE MANGO ON THE MANGO TREE (260 pp.)David MathewKnopf ($3).
The eleven passengers on the big airliner over Africa were an ill-assorted lot. Even before the forced landing beyond Khartoum, anyone could have guessed that only the civilized amenities would keep their clashing backgrounds and personalities from breaking into open nastiness. Lij Makonnen, for example, was an effete Ethiopian prince on his way home from Paris. He hated all Englishmenespecially muscular Christian colonizers like young Peter Richards, who gloried in the weight of the white man's burden. Even on the dark side of the...