Heaven's Edge
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Gunesekera evokes his birthplace, Sri Lanka, as he presents a love story made more brilliant and more sweet by the destruction all around." —Entertainment Weekly
Following the Booker nominated Reef and the acclaimed book The Sandglass, Romesh Gunesekera's third novel, Heaven's Edge, was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "his most accomplished yet . . . Wistful, melancholy and mysterious . . . a complex novel that entwines the individual's quest for wholeness with a country's longing for lost—and better—times."
In search of a dream, Marc leaves London for the land of his patrimony and family secrets—an island once said to be near the edge of heaven but now despoiled by war. After his affair with a subversive "eco-warrior" is cut short when she disappears, Marc must search for her among the mystical land's underground dens of iniquity and ghostly colonial mansions. In the midst of gun battles and foot races, can Marc achieve a happiness he would defend with his life?
Heaven's Edge is "an intriguing hybrid, one part post-colonial adventure story, two parts coming-of-age tale . . . It feels positively epic given how much riffing Gunesekera does on the island's landscape, its groves of mango and jacaranda trees, the lushness of its lantana blossoms" (John Freeman, San Francisco Chronicle).
"The central themes [of Heaven's Edge]—war and peace, violence and nonviolence—
are timeless and timely . . . [Gunesekera's] feeling for the intense natural beauty of his native land is palpable in every phrase of his lyrical and inventive prose style, and runs like a silver thread through the dark territory he explores." —Los Angeles Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set on an environmentally devastated tropical island that resembles his native Sri Lanka, Gunesekera's new novel follows a Londoner named Marc, who comes to the island to find his father but instead gets caught up in a passionate affair with an ecological activist. When he arrives at the country's only hotel, the run-down Palm Beach Inn, Marc encounters a scarred landscape nothing like the idyllic pictures painted by his grandfather Eldon, a native who moved to London in his youth. Marc's attempts to find his father, who disappeared here when Marc was a child, come to naught, but his lover, Uva, opens new doors as she teaches Marc about her efforts to continue farming against the wishes of the island's repressive regime. Government troops begin tracking Uva, and soon soldiers attack and destroy Uva's farm. Marc is imprisoned in a government compound but manages to escape. Once he tracks down Uva's erotically preoccupied bisexual friend, Jaz, and a metalworker named Kris who has pivotal ties to Uva's past, the three embark on a quest to find Uva. The search has moments of both breathtaking suspense e.g., the trio rebuilds a damaged plane to escape pursuing soldiers and quiet introspection, as Marc reflects on his ambivalence toward this land. The novel's structure is a bit clich d, but there's a spark in Gunesekera's writing that gives his characters life; the affair between Marc and Una is especially rich and subtle. Gunesekera has explored these cultures and themes in his earlier books, notably Reef, which was shortlisted for the Booker, but the compelling romance makes this one of his best efforts.
