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In
A Small Place in the Desert, Christopher New brings to North
Africa the same historical perspicacity his earlier novels bring to
South Asia and to the China coast. Summer is ending when retired
schoolteachers Peter Saunders and his wife Clare arrive in Cairo to
begin their guided tour of Egypt. Fifty years earlier, during the
Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorist campaign to expel the British, Peter
had served in Egypt as a young British officer. For him, this is a
trip to a haunted past. For Clare, who is on her first trip to the
desert, this is a chance to help Peter exorcise that past, and to
learn something of a life and love her husband has always kept from
her.
Along the way, the elderly British couple crosses
paths repeatedly with an American pair, ingenuous college students
exuberantly in love and on their first visit to the Old World. With
their blithe insensitivity, the younger couple leave behind a trail of
anger and resentment. Tensions mount to an unsettling climax in the
lakeside city of Ismailia. There, Peter must engage and try to
overcome his darkest memories. Clare will discover at last what
happened fifty years ago that so shadowed his life. And the young
Americans will make a discovery of their own.
A
many-layered novel subtly balancing past and present,
A Small Place in the Desert
is at once a striking portrayal of self-discovery, love and loss, and
an allusive and timely depiction of the troubled interface between the
Western and the Muslim worlds.
Asia 2000 Has also published Christopher New's
The Road to Maridur and
the three titles in China Coast Trilogy
– Shanghai, The Chinese Box, A Change of Flag.
Critics Comments
His many fans
say that New York Times bestseller Christopher New is the best
English-language writer to have come out of Hong Kong. Although he was
born in England and is now sort of transcontinental, the author of the
China Coast Trilogy has always been counted (at least here) as
one of our own. He’s published yet another winner with Orchid
Pavilion, the literary imprint of local publisher Asia 2000.
News sixth and latest novel, A Small Place in the
Desert, is set—rather topically—in North Africa, where the Muslim
and Western worlds merge and clash. An elderly British couple, retired
schoolteachers Mr. and Mrs. Saunders, go for a vacation in Egypt. It’s
the first time for the mild-mannered, wide-eyed Mrs. Saunders, who is
a bit worried about the armed guard she sees coming off the plane. For
her enigmatic husband, however, it’s a return to the desert where he
fought during Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorist campaign against the
British 50 years ago, and an attempt to exorcise the demons of his
past. Peter Saunders adolescent memories—of lust, loneliness and
violence—come back in vivid flashbacks that contrast starkly with his
present reality of guided trips to the mosque and nice hotel meals.
A Small Place in the Desert is a clearly and beautifully written
novel about the two tail ends of adulthood, a portrait of the artist
as a young and old man.
Joyce Hor-Chung
Lou, HK Magazine
Readers Comments
Extract
Copyright © Christopher New
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