- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Black Swan; New edition edition (2 July 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0552999253
- ISBN-13: 978-0552999250
- Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 19.8 x 2.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 102,015 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"'Atmospheric masterfulness...trenchant unforgettableness...It will be surprising if this year sees a more disturbing or haunting novel' Sunday Times; 'Spectacular' The Times; 'Glorious discomforting and mysterious' Independent; 'Able to look unblinking at pain and suffering without tricks or trendiness' Guardian; 'An impressive and disturbing work of art' Literary Review"
Book Description
Robert Edric's breakout book, a stunning novel set in colonial Congo
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
It is 1897, and a motley group of British functionaries is running a concessionary station, only marginally successful, in Ukassa Falls in the Congo Free State, trading and exploring, mapping new areas of the country for further exploration, and using natives to strip minerals from quarries. Individually, however, their primary mission is protecting themselves and their jobs, while keeping an eye on a more lucrative Belgian enterprise across the river and on the slave-trader Hammad, who fancies himself the potential emperor of a future, native-run country. When gunfire signals the arrival of an unexpected visitor, Capt. James Frasier hopes it means the return to British jurisdiction of his friend, Nicholas Frere, who, missing for 51 days in the wilderness, is now in Belgian custody, awaiting trial for killing a native child.
At an agonizingly slow pace, Edric builds the tension and an ominous sense of mystery. His characters come to life through their conversations, conflicts, and actions, rather than through passive descriptions or long biographies. The reader, too, must be active, accumulating important details on his own by observing the action, some of it intense, and participating in it, however reluctantly. Several grim and explicit scenes of atrocity attest to Edric's abhorrence of the mistreatment of indigenous people (the subject also of his novel Elysium, set in Tasmania) and of the destruction of birds and wildlife. His opposition to colonialism, religious fanaticism, mindless bureaucracy, and lock-step adherence to rules and regulations underlies all the action here.
Edric transmutes the wilderness into a living force which dramatically affects all its inhabitants. The river, with its traffic, both unites and divides. Images of light and dark and echoes of Heart of Darkness are constant, and when "the horror" is finally revealed at the end, it out-horrors anything Conrad ever dreamed of. With a conclusion full of literary pyrotechnics, this is a chilling recreation of the worst nightmares of colonialism and of man's inhumanity to man. Mary Whipple
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Intriguing. The Heart of Darkness meets The Trial. Isolated in the heart of the Belgian Congo a group of Europeans eke out an existance for the unnamed company, trading commodities up and down the ever rain swelled river. Subject to unknown conspiracies interlinked with a vague murder charge things begin to fall about. The decline of the trading station throughout the book echoes the growing moral ambiguity, uncertainty and sense of vague but rising menace. The conspiracy is off just off screen, one is always interpreting the shadows of events and trying to slot them together. It has the unnerving nonspecifity of Kafka's Trial, whilst at the same time evoking the moral decay created by strangeness and the distance from civilization.
A dark novel, with the central charcter mostly passive as lives and commerce break apart around him. The book is slow paced, treacle like at times, and can be infuriating at the lack of revelation. Occasionally one just wants the answer, just want a character to say it rather than imply it. The denouement shied away from the blackest of all revelations and was I think the weaker for it. However, overall a satisfying, disturbing dark read.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Turn of the century and the Belgian Congo is on the cusp of independence... scapegoats must be found for the evils colonialism have inflicted. Edric's style evokes the torrid humidity and communicates the disconnection and disillusionment of the displaced Europeans, building to a fine climax. A must read.
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