Disappearance"A young Afro-Guyanese engineer comes to a coastal Kentish village as part of a project to shore up its crumbling sea-defences. He boards with an old English woman, Mrs Rutherford, and through his relationship with her discovers that beneath the apparent placidity and essential Englishness of this village, violence and raw emotions are not far below the surface, along with echoes of the imperial past. In the process, he is forced to reconsider his perceptions of himself and his native Guyana, and in particular to question his engineer's certainties in the primacy of the empirical and the rational. This novel makes reference to the work of Conrad, Wilson Harris and VS Naipaul to set up a multi-layered dialogue concerning the nature of Englishness, the legacy of Empire and different perspectives on the nature of history and reality."--BOOK JACKET. |
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African Alfred Alfred's all-you Amerindian asked Aswan Dam Bambara beach body bottle bulldozer bush Caribbean Christie Christie's cliff cloth colour conger eel coolie cottage Counting House creole cruelty curse Curtis Curtis's Dabydeen's David Dabydeen disappeared drink Dunsmere edge engineer England English everything eyes face feel feet flesh flowers Freddo garden gave glass Guyana Guyanese hand Harlot's Progress head Indian Irish Jack Jack's Jamal knew land leprechauns Leroy Leroy's lives looked machine masks memory mind mother mouth never numbers past paused Pearce perhaps photographs pots preacherman Professor Fenwick protect realised resumed ritual rocks Roosevelt Rushton Rutherford sea-dam sea-wall seemed sense shirt soon spirits stared stone stories strange suddenly Swami talk tell There's things tion told took tree turned village voice walked wall watching What's whole women wondered words workers Yaka