The author takes pains to keep the reader informed of Jamaica's developing history she pins the structure on quotations from Sun Tzu's ancient Chinese manual of military strategy. The story is a fragmented chain of brief episodes, in which we see Pao struggle for dominance and fulfilment in a violent society. Young's is a narrative of confusion and conflict, both in the political world and within the self. The author takes Pao through the major events of the second half of the 20th century, from independence to the Rasta Revolution. Growing up under the protection of his "Uncle", Pao becomes his heir. In 1938 Young's unheroic hero fled the chaos of his revolutionary homeland to thrive under the wing of the legendary Zhang, who runs a protection racket in Kingston's Chinatown. The first-person narrator, writing in a version of local patois, is of Chinese descent, belonging to a community of Chinese immigrants that began in the mid 19th century and came to be resented by black inhabitants in proportion to its business success. K erry Young's heartfelt, sparky and affecting debut novel is a chronicle of multicultural Jamaica, both in its cultural richness and in its strife and tensions.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |