Pages

Saturday, July 11, 2020

Guyana: Children of Paradise, by Fred D'Aguiar

I usually think of South America as Hispanic (with the exception of Brazil, colonized by Portugal and therefore closely related). Of course, that is not true, especially of the three small countries to the north of Brazil, formerly known as British Guiana, Dutch Guiana and French Guiana.

Since Guiana is a former British colony, many of its inhabitants emigrated to the UK, and I found it quite difficult to find a Guyanese writer actually living in Guyana, although there are a number in Britain. Fred D'Aguiar was born in London to Guyanese parents, but spent much of his childhood growing up in Guyana. For his novel, Children of Paradise, he has taken as his inspiration the true story of the Jonestown massacre. Jonestown was a religious community established in a remote area of the Guyanese jungle by American pastor Jim Jones. In 1978 most of the community, around 900 members including 300 children, died after drinking a cyanide laced potion, at the directive of the leader, rather than face investigation by authorities.

This book is a novel and the author does not claim it sticks to the facts, but it does seem to follow them quite closely. It chillingly sets out the ways in which a charismatic leader can exert a hold over a large group of people, both by mental and physical methods. One thing that did rather puzzle me was the presence in the community of a pet gorilla. It was implied that the gorilla was taken into captivity when his mother was shot, presumably in the forest where the community was located. Gorillas however, are native to Africa and not to South America. Was the gorilla transported across the ocean? There seemed to be no good reason why that might have happened. Nevertheless, the gorilla is central to the story so it was necessary for me to suspend my disbelief on that point.

Fred D'Aguiar is also a poet and that showed through particularly in the final chapter which interweaves two alternate endings to the story, one hopeful and one less so. I wanted to believe that the resourceful 10 year old Trina, along with her mother Joyce, and a large band of the commune's children, did manage to escape. In the real life version, sadly, that did not happen.

Children of Paradise was published in the UK by Granta Books in 2014 and in the USA by Harper Collins in 2016.

1 comment:

Ralph Bishop said...

Hello mate nicce post