From Jonathan Raban, the award--winning author of Bad Land""and""Passage to Juneau, comes this quirky and insightful story of what can happen when one can and does go home again.
For the past thirty years, George Grey has been a ship bunker in the fictional west African nation of Montedor, but now he's returning home to England-to a daughter who's a famous author he barely knows, to a peculiar new friend who back in the sixties was one of England's more famous singers, and to the long and empty days of retirement during which he's easy prey to the melancholy of memories, all the more acute since the woman he loves is still back in Africa. Witty, charming and masterly crafted, ""Foreign Land""is an exquisitely moving tale of awkward relationships and quiet redemption.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
"Jonathan Raban's achievements in this novel are nothing short of awesome."
--"The Washington Post"
"Raban has a wonderful gift...These characters seem to index an entire civilization."
--"The Village Voice Literary Supplement
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"Raban is a first-rate observer, with an eye for the ridiculous and a gift for the sudden pounce."
--"Newsday
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Raban's first novel, an engrossing account of what it can mean to return home
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Seller: Dan Pope Books, West Hartford, CT, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. NY: Viking, 1985. First U.S. edition. First printing. Hardbound. Fine in a fine jacket. Remainder stamps lower edges. Quarter cream over gray paper-covered boards, with purple spine lettering. Original price intact on front flap ($16.95). Comes with archival-quality mylar dust jacket protector. Octavo, 352 pages, cream endpapers. After retiring from a colonial post in West Africa, George Grey returns to England, buys a small sailboat, and sets out alone to sea in a final bid for freedom and self-reinvention. Jonathan Raban (1942 2023) was a British novelist, travel writer, and critic whose works include "Hunting Mister Heartbreak," "Passage to Juneau," and "Waxwings." "Foreign Land" was his first novel and marked his transition from acclaimed travel writing to fiction. F4400. Seller Inventory # 3134