- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Viking (29 Jan 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0670875902
- ISBN-13: 978-0670875900
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 11.9 x 3.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,205,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Undiscovered Country
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Product Description
Product Description
Set in Venezuela in the early 1950s, this story paints a portrait of an expatriate world where the privileged, but desperate, lives of the mainly British and American community get turned upside down by the arrival of a family of Dutch war refugees.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A voyage into a past where nothing stays the same,
By A Customer
This review is from: Undiscovered Country (Paperback)
Christina Koning has crafted a novel fuelled by tender and observant nostalgia for the innocence of the final days of pre-post-colonialism. The anachronism is the novel's starting point, for Toni, the narrator, is returning to the country where her childhood took place in a hedonistic expat. community of English, Dutch and Americans. She is hoping to retrieve, or discover, the past from the perspective of adult knowingness. It's not possible - the adult Toni can grasp the 'truth' now in ways she couldn't as a child, but in doing so she loses her memory of how it actually lived. The narrative skilfully pulls off the trick of Toni hovering between the two states of knowledge and innocence. Like Hamlet, from which its title is drawn, this is a story of lost innocence. If it were no more than that it would still be a fine work. The special achievement of Undiscovered Country is the way in which the reconstruction of a secure post-war childhood is juxtaposed with the understated horror of the story of Sofie van Wel, a Jewish survivor of the Nazi occupation of Holland. Sofie's distraught consciousness is counterpoised with the child Toni's dispassionate curiosity, and Sofie becomes, like Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre, 'the madwoman in the attic' - an expression of the raw terrors and cruelties below the surface of the sophisticated manoeuvres of love and capitalism. The title of the novel works as a metaphor on many levels - geographical, historical, psychological, spiritual and sexual. Aptly, the narrative is set in Venezuela, the country named for Venus. Read it.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent,
This review is from: Undiscovered Country (Paperback)
Christina Koning's Undiscovered Country is one of those novels that transports you to another time and place without over-killing the detail. So choice is her use of descriptive text that you actually conjure up the images of the place, time, clothes, cars even old fashioned coca-cola bottles - that becoming wholly involved within this world is never in question. Thankfully the tale to be told and characters within are equally compelling. Set in South America in 1953 the book tells the story of English and American ex-pats living together in a tight knit, gossip community. A strange Dutch family arrive amongst the well groomed and educated set which ignites a series of events that leads to drama, heartbreak, lust, black magic, burgeoning adolescence and, utlimately, death. The main characters are wonderfully three dimensional especially Vivenne and her daughter Toni who's eyes we experience most of the action through. Scenarios are believable and human which make them emotional and immediate while Koning skillfully injects moments of sensuality and humour when you, perhaps, may not expect it. This would make a wonderful film.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent,
This review is from: Undiscovered Country (Paperback)
A beautifully descriptive book, allowing the reader to feel fully involved. Love, hate, torture, disfunctional parents, black magic, loveable rogues and distorted innocence, these diverse influences make Undiscovered Country enchanting from beginning to end. Read in the hot sunshine to get the full effect!
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