Black Ajax
By George MacDonald Fraser
Carroll & Graf, $23
ISBN 0786705531

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George MacDonald Fraser's hero in this latest history-as-novel entry is Tom Molineaux, a freed slave-turned-pugilist from New Orleans. In 1810, Molineaux, the "Black Ajax," fought and lost a legendary bout against Britain's champion Tom Cribb; in the re-match in 1811 Cribb again bested Molineaux. There was never a third encounter, but those two titanic battles set both Cribb and Molineaux "aloft and apart; it was a case of Cribb first, Molineaux second, and the rest nowhere."

Cribb retired undefeated in 1822 -- the first superstar in the history of the sport. Molineaux died in 1818, a broken-down, drunken, prize-ring cast-off; his chief claims to fame today are the two celebrated fights with Cribb and the fact that he was the first (and, according to Fraser, perhaps the best) in a long succession of great black heavyweight boxers.

Employing a variant of William Faulkner's use of multiple narrators, Fraser gives us the rise and fall of Tom Molineaux through the statements (as recorded by an unidentified interviewer) of 16 witnesses -- real, fictitious, and anonymous. The entire spectrum of society is represented. Even Captain Buckley ("Mad Buck") Flashman, late of the 23rd Light Dragoons, makes his bow, with a spate of rodomontade and gossip reminiscent of the performances of his more famous offspring, Harry (the notorious centerpiece of Fraser's Flashman Papers).

The most moving witnesses, however, are those members of the "Fancy," the British boxing and sporting establishment. These retired pugilists, trainers, instructors, managers, and promoters transform the story of Tom Molineaux into a drama with tragic dimensions.

Before the second fight with Cribb, former slave and pugilist Bill Richmond tells Molineaux that, even when black people are free, they "will always think like slaves until one of them wins . . . some thing which the white man believes belongs to him alone. The Championship of England is such a thing . . . and I tell you, when a black man wins it, he will have changed the world."

Robert C. Jones is freelance writer in Warrensburg, Missouri.