Chomumbhar, a small republic on the Indian Ocean, is unknown to the rest of the world until President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy arrive on a state visit to the island, in 1962. Chomumbhar's colonial past, its autocratic government, and its ensuing alliance with America over four decades mark the lives of its citizens. Muni, a young Untouchable housemaid who eagerly awaits the state visit; Li Li Loong, a seamstress who makes a dress that changes her life; Prime Minister Ferdinand D'Souza, the island's visionary leader who is blinded by ambition and dreams for his country; Father Daniel Sullivan, an American Jesuit following in the footsteps of St. Francis Xavier; Mariel Vega, a beautiful Eurasian prostitute at the local US military base; and Alden Pyle, "The Quiet American," a CIA operative charged with seeding democracy in Vietnam and Chomumbhar.
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More About the Author
Gail Vida Hamburg is an American journalist and author born in 1960s post-colonial Malaysia. She spent her early years in Hertfordshire and London in the UK, where she attended school and college, before working in London legal rights agencies advocating migrant and civil rights. She moved to the United States in her twenties, first to New York and then to Chicago, where she developed a career in mass communications, journalism, media relations and academia. Hamburg's first novel, "The Edge of the World," about the impact of American foreign policy on individual lives -- inspired by Graham Greene's "The Quiet American" -- was released by Mirare Press, Boston in 2007. The novel was featured in Bertrand Russell's "The Spokesman," at the Graham Greene Festival, and nominated for the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. Her forthcoming novel, "Liberty Landing," a social novel about America that continues John Dos Passos' USA trilogy, is scheduled for release in 2012 by Mirare Press www.mirarepress.com Hamburg studied mass communications at North East London Polytechnic, UK and holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington Writing Seminars at Bennington College, Vermont, USA.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
GREENE WOULD HAVE SMILED,
By Bombay (Chicago) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Edge of the World (Paperback)
For a change, the blurb on the cover does not exaggerate: "Gail Vida Hamburg's novel in stories is a stunning collection of psychologically complex and stylistically sophisticated tales." I read The Edge of the World with great admiration, in particular for Hamburg's ability to get at the essence of a person so concisely and immediately. The language, too, is frequently gorgeous. For instance: "Squinting into the distance, you could see water and sky held together by a barely discernible thread of pale silk."A number of remarkably differentiated characters is introduced in an exotic and enticing realm, and the stories appear to move benignly from decade to decade (four stories set in the 50s and 60s, 3 in the 70s and 80s, 3 in the 80s and 00s), but the American presence grows insidiously through the years until the final explosive conclusion which lays bare the ugliness of our foreign policy. Graham Greene's The Quiet American provided the inspiration for the book, but Hamburg is too modest when she says a familiarity with Greene's novel will enhance an understanding of her own. The Edge of the World stands squarely and solidly on its own. Greene would have smiled, reading the book, nodding his head.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fantastic writer,
By CJ Hennessy (Chicago) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Edge of the World (Paperback)
The stories in The Edge of the World are marvelous. Totally immediate. And gripping. They have that great hit-you-in-the-stomach feel of the French tradition, that clear eyed unflinching look at life, its dreadful humanness, sadness, and despair. The author has that gut way of writing, like Zola, no excess fat on the written body, and not afraid to tell it like it is. And her ability to portray the minds of people from disparate backgrounds is breathtaking.A wonderful book. CJ Hennessy, Chicago
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant,
By Alexander (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Edge of the World (Paperback)
In my mind, Gail Hamburg is one of the most underrated writers working today. She was a great reporter and a excoriating critic of the Bush adminsitration and she's an even better fiction writer, which is saying a lot. The Edge of the World is mordant, blistering and beautifully told. Like a verbal fugue, this chain of interconneceted short stories has the richness and strangeness of a truly original work. It may remind some in its lurching between real and adoptive homelands of Kirin Desai's work but the tone is, to me, more interesting -- tougher, less inflected with the consciously exotic and more unsentimental. This is a must read.
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