Customer Reviews

Gunbearer: The Journal of S.M. Mumbai (Pt. 1)

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Jan Merlin told me not long ago that he had been fascinated by Africa since the age of 5, when he heard tales of the continent from a sea-roving uncle. I'd have known that without being told, from this unique work of literature, which evokes what it was like to safari in Africa in the mid-19th Century with truly extraordinary vividness.

The author's "voice" allows us to saturate ourselves in the colors, textures, odors, sounds and sensations of a trek through wildest Africa. In about 60 years of reading novels, I've never encountered anything quite like this, in terms of transporting the reader far from the here-and-now, into a long-vanished world whose every feature is alien, yet recognizably human. [Think of the seagoing adventures of Patrick O'Brien, and you still won't quite have the immediacy of the work at hand.]

The novel also tries to do justice to a long-forgotten historical figure, the explorer Speke, whose untimely death and sometimes-vicious rivalry with the much-more-famous Richard Burton have conspired to cheat him of almost all credit for his incredible exploits and endurance.

But the character you won't soon forget is the narrator, another actual historical figure, "Bombay." From the first line of the first page, Bombay offers a vocabulary and a viewpoint totally unique to English literature. Think of Huckleberry Finn, and you won't even be halfway there!

This new edition of a work previously published in 1999 is now split into two volumes and is also far more professionally printed than the earlier edition. Recommended!