Anya has been backpacking in the Spice Islands, but her last postcard home arrived months ago. Now her anxious father, Francesco, has gone in search of her. Almost within sight of land the ferry he's travelling on sinks and Francesco and two other Europeans are washed ashore on the island from which Anya's last postcard was sent. They are immediately arrested, and then almost as swiftly released under surveillance when Francesco shows the local police captain a photograph of himself with the country's president. Now, although they may not leave the island, they can pick up the pieces of their plans - the two Europeans to make their TV documentary about a remote tribe in the hills, Francesco to find his daughter. What Francesco cannot know is that by showing the photograph he has unleased a chain of events that leaves them all at the mercy of the conflicting ambitions of the Christian police chief and the Muslim army colonel.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
At the start of this dour meditation on loss and culture clash by Norwegian author Kopperud (The Time of Light), a European man named Francesco is searching for his missing daughter, Anya, in the Spice Islands when his ferry sinks. He and two documentary film makers, Helen and Kurt, have to swim ashore. Arrested by the local police, Francesco gains his freedom only by showing a photograph of himself standing with the island's leader. Political turmoil on the island involving conflict between Christians and Muslims threatens Helen and Kurt's attempts to make their TV documentary. The resolution to Francesco's search for Anya is sad in an unexpected way, while Francesco's fate, given his initial trump card of the photo with the island's leader, is perhaps too banal. Through luminous, honest prose, this depressing novel explores the hopelessness of the individual's fate in the wider world. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"A powerful examination of the West's inability to understand what motivates age-old conflicts." —Library Journal
"This means to be a serious novel of religious and national ideas, and of what civil war feels like. And it succeeds with heartbreaking intensity." —Daily Telegraph
"A gripping culture-clash novel." —The Guardian
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