- Paperback: 480 pages
- Publisher: Owl (April 22 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0805055347
- ISBN-13: 978-0805055344
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 14 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 476 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,768,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
C. S. Godshalk's first novel is an adventure story in which the excitement is as much mental as physical. In 1838, Gideon Barr sets sails for Borneo, the land he intends to rule. We first see this empire builder through relatives' letters, and he emerges as singularly unbalanced yet singularly driven. He is also, it appears, almost infallible, applying more subtle techniques than the usual smash-and-grab. Gideon is no less forceful in his personal life: he is the sort who will return to England to wed his cousin but bring back her daughter instead--not out of love or attraction, but out of Darwinian common sense.
This flawed hero is only the first in an endless procession of brilliantly drawn men who blend civility with violence, innocence with calm brutality. Some go to Borneo to obliterate their English past; others never had one, having been out to sea at 8 or 9. And the natives are as contradictory as their imperial masters: "Honest, gentle, respectful of even their smallest children, cherishing their lore and tales, and at the same time methodically preparing for their gory celebrations, refining torture, training infants to perform these abominations."
Later come the missionaries and, finally, the Englishwomen, on whom the tropics take a heavy toll. Plotting her return to England with her only surviving child, Gideon's wife writes to her mother: "We have slipped into an unnatural attitude here. We regard the children we lose as necessary casualties, as replaceable." This is a world in which social rounds are riddled with danger, literally.
Kalimantaan is a huge achievement, ambitious in scope, style, thought, historical imagination, and humor. Here Godshalk describes a group of Dutch colonists: "What breed are they? From what planet?... They are the most inappropriate form of life ever to take up residence in the tropics. Everything about them is wrong, their clothes, their religion, their food. A Dutch meal on the equator--sausage, pickles, schnapps--should kill you outright, yet they pile it in for breakfast. Their women deliver babes through withering heat and monsoon rot like rolls from an oven, and these slough off dengue fever as if it were summer complaint. They will break. But it is usually under some vague malaise of the soul..." Kalimantaan demands your total attention and immersion. Yet Godshalk's tale must be read for its romance, extraordinary populace, and anatomy of colonialism, and if you give in to its lush language, it will offer you an inimitable dose of death and desire, magic and malaria dreams. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
At the height of the Victorian Empire, a young officer of the East India Company carves out a small raj for himself on the forsaken island of Borneo in the Malaysian archipelago. Creatively using historical models in her vivid debut, Godshalk constructs her imaginary imperialist with painstaking local research and well-paced prose that unfolds in evocative vignettes. Gideon Barr braves dreaded pirates, insidious disease, monsoons and bloody reprisals from the native headhunters and the Chinese merchants who resent Britain's trade leadership. In a short time, with swift brutality, he manages to establish a thriving entrepot of English society based on the trade in rare spices and metals, opium, the "currency of heads" and "youth disposable as water." Godshalk's point of view shifts restlessly, from Barr, as he writes to his dead mother, to those who join him in his megalomaniacal pursuit, including his dangerous cousin and "dark counterweight," Richard Hogg, who will carry out his own ruthless expansion in the territory as the rajah's deputy. Yet Godshalk finds her steady narrative strength in the voice of Barr's 18-year-old English bride, Melie, through whom we are able to absorb the rich, sodden beauty of the archipelago, the startling diversity of its inhabitants and the humanity in the "phenomenon" of Barr himself. Godshalk's use of native names and words (too few are found in her glossary) helps bolster the illusion of an extraordinary, vanished world?though some less intrepid readers, frustrated by swimming pronouns without fixed antecedents and careless anachronisms in the speech of Godshalk's English people, might lose heart during this otherwise gorgeous, ultimately doomed journey. 50,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating look at the failure of a long bright dream,
By Jen Stelling (Cohoes, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Kalimantaan (Paperback)
This rich, reflective novel tells the story of a hard-headed Englishman's establishment of a private raj in Borneo.Plot summary: In spite of antihero Gideon Barr's misplaced attention to detail, the kingdom survives attacks by pirates, headhunters, cholera and the weather, and even Barr's tragic marriage, only to finally be undone by revolution and misplaced trust. Details of plot and place are wonderful here, but what really stands out is the characterization and the tensions of the many private and public relationships in this kingdom. More tension: the tropical environment consistently resists "civilization" or even comprehension from its European residents. Kalimantaan doesn't put characters with modern sensibilities in front of a quaint backdrop; it's a "historical" novel only in the sense that it interrogates history and historiography.
5.0 out of 5 stars
kalimantaan,
By Hunter Anne Holt "huntoo" (Tampa, Florida) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Kalimantaan (Paperback)
great book. challenging, reminding me of when i was attempting to read my father's _tales of washington irving_ when i was in 2nd grade. at first, i was finding my feet, getting the jist of _kalimantaan_, and then i found myself immersed. piercing insight into flawed humans in relationships in a 19th c. exotic setting. very real characters, horrific death scenes (not written in order to make us squirm, fortunately--and originally), and exact portrayals of love in many, many forms. a broad, swashbuckling adventure story, and those involved are tragic, memorable, and deeply affecting in their humanity.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sadly Inaccessible,
By A Customer
This review is from: Kalimantaan (Paperback)
Before you begin reading this book, realize it isn't quite a novel; it's more a combination history and novel, but not in the usual "historical novel" sense. It briefly involves many real life characters, jumps from vignette to vignette about them, involves totally different groups of people over a large span of years, and confuses with frequent dangling pronouns which don't clearly refer to one person or another. The other reviewers obviously fall into 2 camps. I believe that the great divide between them is a matter of whether the reader could get over the hurdle presented by the book's basic inaccessibility. Rather than 3 stars, I would have liked to give it 5 for beauty of imagery, especially for bringing this exotic locale to life, but one star for story. The book has been listed as a New York Notable etc.--several lists. I believe it received these kudos because it presents a new slant on how to present historical fiction, as described above. But characters aren't cohesive and don't come to life in a three-dimensional way. The joy of the read is all setting. Finding any cohesive tale here is hard work--note that Amazon.com sells a "reader's guide" to Kalimantaan. I don't know what to make of the fact that such an obviously talented writer did not present a cohesive story. Just a failing when writing a first book? Self-conscious writing? Poor editing? I only know I was very eager to start this book, and am bitterly disappointed. To me, the book is the equivalent of a beautiful body without a skeleton.
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