Book description
Lucy Gladwell arrives in Mauritius from England to live with her aunt
and uncle at their grand plantation house. Under the surface of this
beautiful island paradise, poised between India and Africa, there is
unease, and Lucy cannot help but feel discomfited by the restrictions
she sees around her, and by the strangely attractive Don Lambodar, a
young translator from Ceylon. It is 1825: the age of slavery is coming
to its messy end, and word is lapping against the shores of the island
of a charismatic new Indian leader who will shine the light of liberty.
For Lucy, for Don, for everyone on the island, a devastating storm is
coming... 'Gunesekera is strikingly adept at delineating the landscape
of rootlessness ... [He] has a gentle, generous, deceptively light
touch' Sunday Times 'Gunesekera's lush descriptions make you see and
smell the island and feel its hot, damp air on your skin' Spectator
'Gunesekera has that essential gift of the novelist: the ability to make
words live, to create life on the page' Scotsman 'Subtle and convincing,
it is life as art, art as life. Gunesekera is gifted and possessed of a
rare humility ... [his writing] shows what fiction can do, it shows why
fiction is written - and read' Irish Times Lucy Gladwell arrives in
Mauritius from England to live with her aunt and uncle at their grand
plantation house. Under the surface of this beautiful island paradise,
poised between India and Africa, there is unease, and Lucy cannot help
but feel discomfited by the restrictions she sees around her, and by the
strangely attractive Don Lambodar, a young translator from Ceylon. It is
1825: the age of slavery is coming to its messy end, and word is lapping
against the shores of the island of a charismatic new Indian leader who
will shine the light of liberty. For Lucy, for Don, for everyone on the
island, a devastating storm is coming...
