Customer Reviews

The Edge of the World

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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.

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

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.

Welcome to Chomumbhar, an imaginary island on the Indian Ocean. Prepare to study the island's history, meet the colorful characters that inhabit this land, and follow the trajectory of a post colonial land slowly and insidiously falling prey to American intervention. And, if you dare, reflect on the aftermath of political intrusion and displacement caused by the developed world preying on a third world.

The Edge of the World is collection of interconnected stories from a n American journalist, Gail Vida Hamburg, who has strong opinions about the hegemony of US foreign policy. But this book is a standalone work of fine fiction with convincing characters, who walk, talk, interact, dream, face disappointments and stand up to life's horrors as all oppressed humans do. Gail's laconic language deftly chisels and carves and captures these characters, subtly, but achingly and empathetically. Gail has an unflinching ability to stare into human darkness and vulnerabilities; she reveals devastating details about them and their hidden thoughts and motivations while always retaining their humanity.

Muni, the eleven year old girl from the untouchable Qalit caste says when asked what she wants to be when she grows up. "Someone else, Mr. President," the girl says. Eve Mallon, a daughter of Polish-American immigrants and the wife of an Ambassador to Chomumbhar is ill suited for life in a third world island, leaves four or five lipstick-ringed cigarette stubs nestled under the fruit or pushed into the eggs during breakfast. Soly the fifty-seven-year-old Chief Magistrate of the Civic court, waiting for a Rahmin woman meriting his supremacy for years, sadly enough finds himself yearning for the companionship of a law clerk, Kamila, whom, at first glance, he thinks is "ugly beyond redemption." Father Daniel, an American Jesuit priest who goes to the red light district in Riyalh( US military base) looking for a missing person, who ends up being abused by an American soldier. Aslan Fahr whose father grooms him to be a cricket star ends up selling bagels in America. Ferdinand D'Souza, the incarcerated Prime ministers writes prison letters to David, the SNN correspondent, his wife and his son. Filled with pathos and humor these letters tell a harrowing tale of US efforts to drop a military base.

Get to know these characters; get to share a bit of their lives with them to understand the full impact of the devastation that finally comes in the form of US fighter planes.

Gail is an inveterate writer whose deft story telling techniques and stunning imagination cause awe in the reader. She seduces, she cajoles, and she gently coerces the reader to surrender themselves to her prowess. And the reader is left yearning for more.

From the first page, I was entranced with Vida Hamburg's beautiful, lyric language, the subtlety of perception about her characters, and her willingness to be forthright and provocative when she needs to be. With both humor and urgent seriousness she evokes a mélange of cultures and hierarchies within cultures and dares us to remain indifferent to the inevitable collisions that ensue. Because of that, The Edge of the World is an important contribution to literary fiction, especially now.

Every page of Gail Vida Hamburg's work is illuminated with her poetic writing that brings to life characters whose existences are marked by the twin narratives of hope and destruction, so often found in countries still bearing the branding of post-colonial rule. Each chapter chronicles the revelations that take place as the nation's people---from a servant girl to the ruling dictator---come face to face with their own identities and the identity in which their country's past has clothed them. While "The Edge of the World" spans the last four decades, its story is the writing on the wall of what will continue to happen as the identities of people and nations break under the powers of capitalism's neo-colonialism. Nonetheless, her delicate weaving of characters reminds the reader that hope is to be found, even briefly, when human relationships and the strivings of individuals are able to climb above a country's past. Beautifully-rendered political fiction.

A juicy, lyrical read with bite. The Edge of the World is a vividly crafted, engaging collection of stories that, together, tell a devastating tale of the cause and effects of American aggressions. Each story is set in Chomumbar, a fictional island nation that rings so true that I felt slightly embarrassed to be ignorant of its existence. The characters are rendered with cutting wit and delicacy, so that even an oppressive dictator demands our empathy. Hamburg does not let us off the hook. Exquisite.

This beautiful book is a harrowing and profoundly moving biography of an invented island nation-state in the Indian Ocean, as told through a cast of its nationals, immigrants and visitors. Spanning forty years, it brings to life the very real impact of international politics, specifically American intervention and influence, through interconnected stories that link various characters together in original and unexpected ways. Smart, acerbic, touching, and surprisingly humorous, this is necessary reading for those who like their fiction to resonate like life: straight up, no chaser. Stunning.

The Edge of the World is a most compelling book. I started it one morning and read to the very least word without every getting up. The lives that unfold are so subtle and layered, so demanding of attention, that I didn't want to move away from them. Together they add up to a remarkable "civilization" and force us to consider what America has done to islands at every edge of the world since the Kennedy era. The author's sense of place and power of description can make you feel every pain and erotic longing as if your own. This is a must read--especially before the 2008 election. There is a moral dimension to these stories that beg us for compassion.

For those who are students or interested in transnationalism, globalisation and the Asian region, this is a book that will inspire some serious thought. While this novel is clearly perceived by readers as one that emphasizes the political relationship between East and West, I would say that it is more correctly categorized as a modern historical novel and has serious genre implications -- it redefines some traditional boundaries. This is due to its scope which is beyond the usual constraints of the Asian American fiction that most audiences are familiar with, and also its form which uses techniques of the short story cycle. This book takes a critical look at the US, and in that too, also sets itself apart from much of the Asian American fiction that it may or may not be grouped with.

Hamburg clearly understands Asia and how it works, how the people think, what their perceptions are of the West, and how daily life unfolds. This is not written by someone who researched the material--it is written by a person who has lived in Asia. And there is a difference. While to many Asian American writers, Asia is a halcyon place of yesteryear, Hamburg takes and unflinching look at its realities and the West's relationship to this region. This is a unique book in that it gives this picture--one that is almost never seen in the Asian American fiction that the average American reader has come to know and accept as truth.

Read this book for a different take and to cast a critical eye on the future of Asian American literature, and American literature in general. While this book is not perfect (few are), this book is distinguished in that it in no way bows to the standards of Asian American literature that have been seen and read in the 20th century. This book is one that moves in a new direction. In my assessment, this will be viewed as an early forerunner to a new type of Asian American fiction--pluralistic, transnational, using ideas from various genres...in fact, a new American literature, which will become increasingly transnational. Writers like Hamburg will become increasingly important to the landscape of American literature as they are redefining what is considered to be American literature.

There is nothing sentimental about this book--it is raw and energetic and will be viewed in the long haul as an early example of the shift in contemporary American literature in the 21st century.