White Spirit

ISBN-13: 9780803264410 / Angielski / Miękka / 2006 / 182 str.

Paule Constant; Betsy Wing

Opis

After answering a classified ad placed by an import-export company looking for energetic young men willing to take on responsibilities for its African branches no diploma required Victor finds himself on The Will of God, a dilapidated boat heading into the heart of darkness as even Conrad couldn t have imagined. With the piquant mixture of hilarity and painful disenchantment characterizing Paule Constant s vision of the colonial novel, White Spirit follows three innocents Victor; Lola, a mulatto prostitute; and Alexis, who does not know he s a monkey as they negotiate the perverse system of desires and hatreds on an African banana plantation. Selling what no one wants or needs, Victor takes delivery of a barrel of mysterious powder promptly christened white spirit for its ability to bleach the black arms of the workers handling the shipment. To become whiter and worthier of love, Lola buys some and then the rest vanishes. In this nightmarish Africa where colonized and colonizers have each other in a stranglehold, the "white spirit" unleashes an obsession that merges whiteness with a return to paradise an obsession that can only end in catastrophe. Through it all, with her characteristic caustic language, fierce irony, and enormous tenderness for human frailty, Constant portrays the ridiculous without ridicule and, miraculously, sparks a light of hope in the midst of the torment and suffering."