Ere Roosevelt Came - The Adventures of the Man in the Cloak - A Pan-African Novel of the Global 1930s

Ere Roosevelt Came is a short novel by early pan-Africanist Dusé Mohamed Ali. Originally serialised in Ali's Nigerian magazine The Comet in 1934, it grapples with the rise of global fascism and white supremacy, and the growing geopolitical influence of the USA in the interwar period.

This is a fantastical, intricately woven and speculative story about how Black American airmen, organising in secret, fight an international assemblage of white supremacists and Russian foreign agents bent on instigating a new world war. The narrative reveals how Black liberation struggles, Bolshevism, and the rise of so-called 'coloured' Japanese empires were bound together in the Pan-African literary imaginary.

Written by a Sudanese-Egyptian, serialised in West Africa, and set in the USA, Ere Roosevelt Came is a Pan-African novel par excellence, and a fascinating historical document that conveys the complexities of Black internationalism in the interwar years.

The novel is presented with two original, contextualising essays and appendices featuring selected other writings to provide further insight into Ali's vision of a Pan-African future.


Duse Mohamed Ali (1866-1945) was an Egyptian political activist known for his African nationalism. He was also a playwright, historian, journalist, editor, and publisher. In 1912 he founded the African Times and Orient Review, and while living in Lagos, Nigeria, The Comet newspaper, in which his novel Ere Roosevelt Came was serialised in 1934. He inspired many Black nationalists, including a young Marcus Garvey, who he mentored.

Marina Bilbija is Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan University, Connecticut. Her work has appeared in American Literary History, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, South Atlantic Review and Modern Fiction Studies.

Alex Lubin is Professor of African American Studies at Penn State University, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Romance and Rights: The Politics of Interracial Intimacy, 1945-1956; Geographies of Liberation: The Making of an Afro-Arab Political Imaginary, and Never-Ending War on Terror.