Book description
Set in the 1950s, The Broken Word is an extraordinary poetic
sequence that animates and illuminates a dark, terrifying period in
British colonial history. The combination here of language and imagery
that feel utterly contemporary, and subject matter - tribal violence
and subsequent retribution - that seems almost Homeric, gives the
narrative all the febrile energy of classical drama, re-charged and
re-imagined.
Tom has returned to his family's farm in Kenya for the summer
vacation between school and university when he is swept up by the
events of the Mau Mau uprising. Beginning with sporadic, brutal
attacks by dispossessed Kikuyu on the British now occupying their land
- attacks often executed with nothing more than traditional panga
knives - the conflict escalates as the terrified British stop at
nothing to re-impose order, eventually driving most of the Kikuyu
population into the prison camps of what has become known as
'Britain's Gulag'. As Tom is propelled into violence and horror the
poem mutates into a meditation on the inheritance of conflict, the
destruction of innocence and the impossibility of afterwards saying
what one has seen.
Written with rigour, intelligence, and a fierce, unsparing clarity,
this is profound, lyrical work with that rare confidence and thrilling
originality that announce the arrival of a significant new voice.
Adam Foulds was born in 1974 and lives in south London. He is a
graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia and
his poetry has appeared in a number of literary magazines. His first
novel,
The Truth About These Strange Times
, was published in 2007.
