Product Description

Marie, a well-meaning but naive American anthropologist, believes she has found Heaven in the forests of Nigeria; but her belief is challenged as white prospectors stake claims within the territory of the Birri tribespeople, who become increasingly enraged by the colonists' betrayal.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1363027 in Books
• Published on: 1995-11-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author
Joyce Cary was born in 1888 into an old Anglo-Irish family in Londonderry, Ireland. At the age of sixteen he studied painting, first in Edinburgh and then in Paris. From 1909 to 1912 he was at Trinity College, Oxford, where he read law. He then fought and served in the Red Cross in the Balkan War of 1912-13. Thereafter, having joined the Colonial Service in 1914, he served in the Nigeria Regiment during the First World War. He was wounded while fighting in the Cameroons, and returned to civil duty in Nigeria in 1917 as a district officer. West Africa became the locale of his early novels. Cary settled in Oxford in 1920, and died there in 1957.

Customer Reviews

A comedy of mis-understandings lead to tragedy.
Arrival of American `anthropologist' Marie adds yet another level of misunderstanding to the British colonial administration of Nigeria. Marie loves the Birri people, Boucher tries to protect their land from the miners, the grotesqueness of the missionaries is only exceeded by their conversts, Ulli goes from bad to worse... After reading this book no one could support colonialism, nor could anyone believe that independence would lead to peace and happiness in our lifetime. Maybe this pessimistic conclusion accounts for Cary's obscurity. This is the best book I've read in ages.