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Those who know me also know of my gripe, that agents and publishers have always reminded me that publishing is xenophobic when it comes to novels set in obscure countries like my own, Guyana, which readers have never heard of.
Very well. So I was pretty delighted to hear that a new "novel" set in Guyana is making waves in the literary scene. The Sly Company of People WHo Care by Rahu l B attacharya, an Indian national, has won the Hindu prize and is shortlisted for the Man Asian Prize, and is no doubt in other prize lists as well. It's about a young Indian journalist who spends a year in Guyana "a forgotten colonial society of raw mesmerizing beauty". I'd never heard of this writer before but google brought up all kinds of rave reviews, from the Guardian to the New York Times, Washington Post, Times, Independent, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe -- you name it. He has been compared in these reviews to Naipaul and Rushdie and Waugh and even Dante.
So I bought it, in great excitement. And am sorely disappointed. For a start, it isn't a novel at all. It's a fictionalised travelogue. I'm three chapters in and all the author has done till now is describe the quirky characters his MC (obviously, a fictionalised version of himself) meets in Guyana. All these really weird, amusing people nobody could ever take seriosly, all speaking in creole and saying pretty outrageous things; he has also taken an overland trip to "the waterfall", obviously, Kaieteur.
Sure, the writing is --- unusual. Not my thing; too clever, too contrived, to manipulated. You have to reread many sentences to get what he is saying, and since he uses a lot of Guyanese slang within the actual text I wonder how many non-Guyanese actually understand some of the prose? No character is more than skin deep up to now; just quirky. In style, it's the cliche of a very literary "novel", except that it's not a novel: there's no story. Like I said, it's a travel memoir. It's pretty plain to see that all the scenes are simply reproductions of conversations with eccentric locals he had himself. Character diversity is obviously a big theme, and that seems to be what all these reviewers find so fascinating. Big deal. Not one of the characters is anything more than "funny" - not funny ha-ha, funny foreign: non-European/American and therefore "interesting". Almost like in a zoo.
So yes, I'm bitterly disappointed, but at the same time want it to do well, just so that Guyana gets a bit more attention. Trust me, it deserves more attention. Not only for my own sake and the novels I haven't been able to get published and the new one I'm writing right now: it's a genuinly interesting country and the stories that come out of it are well worth hearing. Unfortunately, this is not one of those stories.
Anyway -- this is just a bit of a rant. Maybe the book will get better. But so much gets my back up. The way one of the characters speaks of Amerindian women, for instance: that having sex with them is always just like rape because -- oh well. Boy's talk kind of thing. I hate it.
Very well. So I was pretty delighted to hear that a new "novel" set in Guyana is making waves in the literary scene. The Sly Company of People WHo Care by Rahu l B attacharya, an Indian national, has won the Hindu prize and is shortlisted for the Man Asian Prize, and is no doubt in other prize lists as well. It's about a young Indian journalist who spends a year in Guyana "a forgotten colonial society of raw mesmerizing beauty". I'd never heard of this writer before but google brought up all kinds of rave reviews, from the Guardian to the New York Times, Washington Post, Times, Independent, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe -- you name it. He has been compared in these reviews to Naipaul and Rushdie and Waugh and even Dante.
So I bought it, in great excitement. And am sorely disappointed. For a start, it isn't a novel at all. It's a fictionalised travelogue. I'm three chapters in and all the author has done till now is describe the quirky characters his MC (obviously, a fictionalised version of himself) meets in Guyana. All these really weird, amusing people nobody could ever take seriosly, all speaking in creole and saying pretty outrageous things; he has also taken an overland trip to "the waterfall", obviously, Kaieteur.
Sure, the writing is --- unusual. Not my thing; too clever, too contrived, to manipulated. You have to reread many sentences to get what he is saying, and since he uses a lot of Guyanese slang within the actual text I wonder how many non-Guyanese actually understand some of the prose? No character is more than skin deep up to now; just quirky. In style, it's the cliche of a very literary "novel", except that it's not a novel: there's no story. Like I said, it's a travel memoir. It's pretty plain to see that all the scenes are simply reproductions of conversations with eccentric locals he had himself. Character diversity is obviously a big theme, and that seems to be what all these reviewers find so fascinating. Big deal. Not one of the characters is anything more than "funny" - not funny ha-ha, funny foreign: non-European/American and therefore "interesting". Almost like in a zoo.
So yes, I'm bitterly disappointed, but at the same time want it to do well, just so that Guyana gets a bit more attention. Trust me, it deserves more attention. Not only for my own sake and the novels I haven't been able to get published and the new one I'm writing right now: it's a genuinly interesting country and the stories that come out of it are well worth hearing. Unfortunately, this is not one of those stories.
Anyway -- this is just a bit of a rant. Maybe the book will get better. But so much gets my back up. The way one of the characters speaks of Amerindian women, for instance: that having sex with them is always just like rape because -- oh well. Boy's talk kind of thing. I hate it.
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