Kalimantaan - Softcover

Godshalk, C. S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805055347 ISBN 13: 9780805055344

Publisher: Henry Holt & Company Inc, 1999

Synopsis

A young Englishman founded a private raj on the coast of Borneo. The world that resulted, boasting stone quays, elegant gardens, churches, and musical levees, eventually encompassed a territory the size of England, its expansion campaigns paid for in human heads. In this world, a version of Victorian colonial society impacted with one of the most violent cultures on earth. The results were often startling -- pockets of tenderness and extreme brutality appearing in odd corners. A small tribe of fugitives, adventurers, criminals, and saints -- the madly talented and the simply mad - peopled this world. This is their story. The deeper story resides in the realm of the heart. It is about love in absurd conditions, the tenacity of it as well as our ability to miss it repeatedly and with perverse genius.

About this title

Review:

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 highly 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 since childhood. 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 humour. 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 a 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.

Review:

""Kalimantaan" contains a whole world-- one that, upon reaching the last page, you'll immediately want to revisit."--Michael Upchurch, "Chicago Tribune""The work of a born storyteller...a first novel of formidable imaginative power."--Annette Kobak, "The New York Times Book Review"""Kalimantaan" may be the wisest book about love since Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera"....It may also be the best historical novel of the past ten years."--Scott Stossel, "The Boston Phoenix""Ravishing....Godshalk has a genius for cutting to the heart of things, as if the time for leisurely and considered acquaintance didn't exist."--Alice Truax, " The New Yorker""Readers will never think of Kipling or Conrad in quite the same way again."--Brian St. Pierre, "San Francisco Chronicle""A spectacular book and at times a superb one."--Richard Eder, "Los Angeles Times Book Review"

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company Inc
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0805055347
• ISBN 13: 9780805055344
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480