Review
From the book jacket: Set in Liberia and the United States from 1975 through 1991,
The Darling is a
political-historical thriller -- reminiscent of Greene and Conrad -- that
explodes the genre, raising serious philosophical questions about terrorism,
political violence, and the clash of races and cultures.
Comment: According to some reviewers,
The Darling isn't a patch on
Russell Bank's 1996 novel,
Cloudsplitter (a finalist for the 1998
Pulitzer). If that's the case, I just hope I can clear some space in my
reading schedule at some point to read
Cloudsplitter, because I found
The
Darling to be a rich, complex and altogether compelling read, so would be
delighted to read something even better!
If you appreciate books that tell a good story at the same time as they inform,
then...
Beyond the Book
Liberia is a tiny country on the west coast of Africa which was claimed
by the USA in the early 19th century for the purposes of repatriating free
blacks back to Africa. The 'American Colonization Society' was supported
by two very different groups: abolitionists who wanted to free African slaves
and their descendants and 'repatriate' them, and slave owners who feared free
people of color and wanted to expel them from America. They found a little
patch of Africa that hadn't already been claimed by any of the European powers,
and the first colonists arrived around 1820. In 1847 (after a couple of decades
of conflict with the indigenous people, who were understandably none to pleased
at being colonized) the legislature of Liberia...
