Disappearance by David Dabydeen (English) Paperback Book

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Talks about a Guyanese engineer working on a cliff reclamation project in rural Kent. This novel contains intertextual play with Conrad, Wilson Harris and V S Naipaul, and investigates the buried centre of Empire deep in England and the ironies of the difficult but hopeful multicultural transformation of British society.

FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description

A young Afro-Guyanese engineer comes to a coastal Kentish village as part of a project to shore up its sea-defences. He boards with an old English woman, Mrs Rutherford, and through his relationship with her discovers the latent violence and raw emotions present in this apparently placid village. He discovers, too, that underlying the village's essential Englishness, echoes of the imperial past resound. In the process, he is forced to reconsider his perceptions of himself and his native Guyana, and in particular to question his engineer's certainties in the primacy of the empirical and the rational. This is a richly intertextual novel which uses reference to the novels of Conrad, Wilson Harris and V.S. Naipaul's 'The Enigma of Arrival' to set up a multi-layered dialogue concerning the nature of Englishness, the legacy of Empire and different perspectives on the nature of history and reality.

Author Biography

David Dabydeen was born on a sugar estate in Berbice, Guyana in 1957. His family lived for a time in New Amsterdam where he attended school. He recalls moving back to his family village, Brighton, during the 1964 race riots. At the age of around ten he won a scholarship to Queen's College in Georgetown where he studied for a couple of years. He was sent to England at the age of twelve in 1969 and was in care until he was sixteen. He won a scholarship to Cambridge University and read English there and at London Universities, completing his doctorate in 1982. He was a post-doctoral fellow at Oxford University for three years. He is currently Professor at the Centre for Caribbean Studies, University of Warwick and was for some years a roving ambassador for Guyana.

Review

'Richly layered with symbol and metaphor, Disappearance is about the brief relationship between a young Guyanese engineer and the old English woman he lodges with while building sea-defences for a cliff-top village near Hastings' Time Out. 'An electrifying array of surmises about how the imperial past has affected everyone in Britain today.' Scotsman.

Long Description

This novel that echoes the styles of Joseph Conrad and V. S. Naipaul follows a young Guyanese engineer appointed to help save and shore up a Kent coastal village's sea defenses, and his relationship with the old woman with whom he lodges. Learning more about the village's history through his relationship with Mrs. Rutherford, the narrator discovers that underlying the village's Englishness is a latent violence that echoes the imperial past, forcing him to not only reconsider his perceptions of himself and his native Guyana, but also to examine the connection between land and memory.

Review Quote

"His 'condition of England' novel is both provocative and accomplished." -- The Times Literary Supplement

Details ISBN1845230140 Author David Dabydeen Short Title DISAPPEARANCE Pages 157 Language English ISBN-10 1845230140 ISBN-13 9781845230142 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY FIC Year 2005 Edition 3rd DOI 10.1604/9781845230142 UK Release Date 2005-12-16 Imprint Peepal Tree Press Ltd Place of Publication Yorkshire Country of Publication United Kingdom AU Release Date 2005-12-16 NZ Release Date 2005-12-16 Publisher Peepal Tree Press Ltd Publication Date 2005-12-16 Audience General Edition Description 3rd Third Edition, Third ed. We've got this

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