Black earth, white bones. This item is unavailable.Black earth, white bones

288 pages. ex-library Kit Wallace has spent his whole life running away. Through luck and lack of p urpose he has finally washed up in the Pacific nation of Ventiak. Here, on the t op floor of the Royal Albert Hotel, he avoids his past by drinking whisky and wr iting poetry he fully intends no one should ever read. Yet, despite himself, he has been drawn into the lives of the people around him. When he is invited to jo in a scam in the phosphate industry, which will defraud the Ventiakans of millio ns of dollars, he is torn between disbelief, self-serving cynicism and a loyalty that takes him by surprise. His life begins to unravel and he is forced into ac tion.Meanwhile, in the upland forest, the Rage is beginning: a periodic ramp age of millions of ants will sweep over the island, carrying all before it.In this, his fifth novel, Chris Else has created an utterly convincing Polynes ian setting with its own brilliantly realised language, culture, flora and fauna . His humour and wisdom are at once merciless and forgiving as he uses language to explore man's - and woman's - deep-seated need to be both an individual and t o belong.…