Whiteman | Granta

  • Published: 08/03/2007
  • ISBN: 9781846270505
  • 130x20mm
  • 288 pages

Whiteman

Tony D'Souza

For readers of backpacker classics such as The Beach and Are You Experienced?; those who loved Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight; gap-year wanderers; those who feel the call of VSO – this is the perfect summer page-turner for airport shoppers or armchair travellers. Young, American and idealistic, the Whiteman bounds into the Ivory Coast with a deep desire to Make a Difference. But then the NGO’s funding dries up and he’s stranded, unable to establish a water supply for the village and with plenty of time on his hands. Taking place against the backdrop of bloody civil war, this is the story of a whiteman losing his aid-worker illusions and discovering a different, more complicated Africa: perplexing and brutal, beguiling and sexy.

A startlingly assured debut which captures the intricacies of West African life with a dry but immensely warm humour ... sensual and powerfully insightful

Metro

The Author

Tony D’Souza was born in Chicago to Indian-American parents. At 18 he rode a bicycle across Alaska, at 19 crossed India, at 20 planted grapefruit orchards in Israel, then attended college in Wisconsin and Virginia, spent a year working on fishing trawlers out of Oban and on construction sites in Fort William in Scotland, before serving three years in the Peace Corps in West Africa. His fiction has been published in the New Yorker, Playboy, the Literary Review, and his first book, Whiteman, was published to great acclaim. He lives in Florida.

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