From Publishers Weekly
Set on a fictional South Pacific island inhabited by black bantam pigs and a clan of nearly-naked eccentrics, this excessively zany British import has a raging conscience and a muted heart. Managua, a one-legged tribesman (most of his fellow inhabitants are missing limbs), is obsessed with transcribing
Hamlet into island pidgin and finds his unconventional paradise disturbed when William Hardt, a white American lawyer, arrives to arrange reparations for natives whose limbs have been blown off by the landmines left behind years ago by the American military. Hardt soon witnesses a staggering array of peculiarities: the "the shitting beach" where villagers empty their bowels every morning; transvestite men forced into dressing in drag by parents who wanted girls; vision quests brought on by consuming "kassa," a red hallucinogenic paste. A few years after his departure from the island, Hardt's successful mission has drastic consequences for the island. Journalist Harding (
While the Sun Shines) is an equal opportunity and brutally sharp lampooner, though he sometimes misses (notably in his invocation of 9/11 as a parallel to corporate America's exploitation of the island). Folly, silliness and cultural sucker punches come at full speed in this ribald, imaginative farce.
(Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
From Booklist
William Hardt, an American human rights lawyer with acute obsessive-compulsive disorder, travels to a South Pacific island where the inhabitants have lost limbs to land mines left behind by American troops. There he meets the wise islander Managua, who loves Shakespeare and is struggling to translate
Hamlet into pidgin English (Hamlet's most famous line translates to "Is be or is be not, is be one big damn puzzler"). As Hardt proceeds to document his case for the U.S. to make reparations to the natives, he is drawn into many of the customs of the tropical paradise, including communing with the dead after smoking plant leaves. Harding easily moves from comic one-liners to poignant scenes of the tragic downside of do-gooders and their best intentions. He also incorporates numerous witty subplots echoing Shakespeare's favorite themes and motifs, with very funny forays into cross-dressing and unrequited love. If he is sometimes too shameless in his quest to get laughs--he has a wide and deep scatological streak--he still manages to pull off one big damn fine book.
Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
