Product Description

‘A most extraordinary parable about mankind … quite unlike anything else I have ever read’ Sunday Express. 'I live on Brazzaville Beach ... I am here because two sets of strange and extraordinary events happened to me ... One in England, first, and then one in Africa.’ On Brazzaville Beach, on the edge of Africa, Hope Clearwater examines the complex circumstances that brought her there. Sifting the details for evidence of her own innocence or guilt, she tells her engrossing story with a blunt and beguiling honesty that not only intrigues and disturbs but is also completely enthralling.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37786 in Books
• Published on: 1991-10-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

About the Author
William Boyd was born in Ghana in 1952. He was brought up there and in Nigeria. He was educated at the universities of Nice, Glasgow and Oxford. He is the author of a number of acclaimed and hugely popular novels and three volumes of short stories, and the recipient of many prizes, including the Whitbread First Novel Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award. He is married and lives in London

Customer Reviews

Just Great!
I found this book by accident, but it is now firmly on my list of modern classics. Quite simply (although it's far from a simple book!)it tells the story of a woman, Hope Clearwater, and explains by a series of stories from her past, how she has got where she is today. There is a large tranche of the story dealing with her primate studies in an un-named African country (Angola?)and her discovery of some surprising and disturbing behaviour by the Chimps. These bits are fascinating in themslves, but the allegorical and interwoven qualities of the plot as a whole allow for some fairly deep self-rflection if that is what you are after. I so highly recommend this book. If you don't like the sound of it from our reviews, it's because our reviews are rubbish!!!

out here on the perimeter we is imaculate
This came out when we worked in Nigeria in the late 80s early 90s. It got around the VSOs and the conservation people, we read it brown and furred. It was the description of the pilot who nicked the jets - I've met that guy. And the last page on Plato's unexamined life. That and the insights into the bitchy politics of the ape world - the monkey people found it was a bit too close to the bone and wondered which outfit he'd worked with. Gombe stream or Mahale? But it stuck - the name Hope Clearwater is wonderful and back in Sussex or Bedfordshire we knew what she faced. Sure he's been there, he has the sounds of Africa. This book is an old friend. It leans in and smiles, Ehhh and gives a funny handshake.

Do read it!
Brazzaville beach manages to be very clever and very accessible at the same time. It also reads like a thriller at times and the readers find themselves turning page after page, eager to reach the end and understand what is so wrong in monkeys' land.The part of the story that is set in England is more slowly-paced but doesn't slow the book down too much and is there for a reason. It is cleverly interwoven with the African part and the whole book makes great fiction.