Kaywana blood

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Jacket front illustration shows a woman in a state of semi-undress, standing in a sugar cane field.

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Notes:: Final volume of trilogy, starts in 1795 ends in 1953 with independence movement. Records the end (Gotterdammerung fashion) of the Groenwegel clan and therefore of the Guyanese plantocracy. Main character Dirk has clear vision of coming of modern competitive markets; on the other hand, he is defeated in a series of ironic twists by his powerful dynastic loyalties deeply tied to notions of purity of race. Despite the fact that his closest friend (and half brother) and the woman he loves are mixed race, he denies them full place in his home and his life. The novel records the triumph of the children of these characters and the rise of Creole Guiana in the twentieth century. Although Dirk realizes the narrowness of his vision at the end, the unlaid specter of race continues to haunt the characters even as independence becomes a possibility. Another novel of borders or thresholds: race (of course), sexuality, the bush and the cultivated, settler colonial, slave, indigene and metropolitan, sanity and madness. Formally elegant, a heavily unmediated dialogue throughout; as is typical in the Guyanese novels, narrative for the extensive natural descriptions often contain the clue to meaning. Ends with abrupt irony (about race); usual lack of resolution, sense of continuation, irresolvable elements, in this case, of race and colonialism. First published in 1958 by Secker & Warburg, London.