The Wild Coast is a novel about how Guyanese might come to terms with living in Guyana. Carew portrays a country in which the echoes of slavery still disturb, with seemingly irreconcilable conflicts between its diverse cultural inheritances, and which is struggling to feel at home in a world where nature, away from the coastal strip and the city, appears inhospitable and wild.
These are the challenges that confront Hector Bradshaw when, as a sickly child, he is sent away to the remote village of Tarlogie. Here he receives an education that he struggles to fit together: the dry colonial education of the tragic Teacher La Rose; the moral precepts of his kindly guardian, Sister Smart; the harsh African vision of the old hunter Doorne; and the sexual education he receives from Elsa.
Above all, for a sickly city boy, there is the challenge of wild nature, disturbingly red in tooth and claw.
Jan Carew was born in the village of Agricola in Berbice, Guyana in 1920.
These are the challenges that confront Hector Bradshaw when, as a sickly child, he is sent away to the remote village of Tarlogie. Here he receives an education that he struggles to fit together: the dry colonial education of the tragic Teacher La Rose; the moral precepts of his kindly guardian, Sister Smart; the harsh African vision of the old hunter Doorne; and the sexual education he receives from Elsa.
Above all, for a sickly city boy, there is the challenge of wild nature, disturbingly red in tooth and claw.
Jan Carew was born in the village of Agricola in Berbice, Guyana in 1920.