The Indian summer of Gabriel Murray;: A novel

Charteris, Hugo

Weidenfeld&Nicolson

On first publication in 1958, The Daily Telegraph's reviewer said "Hugo Charteris' Europeans are neurotic, frightened, clinging to their fragmented patterns...the sheer intensity of the whole book is terrifying." In the wilds of British West Africa, in the 1950s, as colonialism is dying, a small group of whites administer and work a diamond mine, with African help. They are typical of their era in their casual racism, their preoccupation with British modes; the atmosphere can sometimes be likened to 'a Thames country club, circa 1938.' Around the mine are places where Africans from the surrounding area and neighbouring French territory also prospect for the valuable stones. This blasted landscape is the place from which the ferment of insurrection and dissatisfaction, which will bring about the colony's coming independence, arises. Porokorro, in particular, has been a troublespot lately. MacPherson, the local Provincial Commissioner, is nearing the end of his career. Wanting to spread a raft of calm upon these troubled waters, and wanting to show, from his intimate knowledge of the local people, that relations will never truly sour, he organizes what can only loosely be called a picnic - an outing to prove that all is well. With slowly coiling tension, Charteris loads the scene with many and varying points of view: Barber, the head of the mine, whose gregarious ease hides a calculated vision of exactly where the flashpoints might be hiding; Meyer, a diamond dealer, and survivor of Buchenwald, whose outward coolness hides a troubled marriage and a scarred psyche; Isobel, his much younger and seethingly restive wife, over on a visit; Warner, an idealistic journalist, who senses a story and is prepared to risk disaster in pursuing it; and Paul MacPherson, the Provincial Commissioner's young son out from school in Britain, who chases butterflies with his net, fascinated by the glimpse his father is giving him of a lifestyle which is slowly but surely ceasing to exist. The 'picnic' to Porokorro will change them all, and one of them won't come back alive. The spare, snakelike prose of Hugo Charteris' fourth novel explores the late colonial mindset with fascinating depth and unusual candour, creating a harshly vivid portrait of people trapped in the ending of an era.

Picnic at Porokorro

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Michael Walmer

Selected by Evelyn Waugh as the best first novel of 1953, and phenomenally praised by critics on first publication, Hugo Charteris' A Share of the World is one of the great lost novels. This is the first republication in a concerted programme of bringing all of Charteris' works back into print.  This harrowing story of a man lost in his times, bewildered and anguished by both war and love, is a masterful portrayal of the human psyche at odds with itself.  John Grant has a short war. In a matter of three or four days his career as an officer in active service is over, after a disastrous sortie in the Italian campaign in which one of his men is let down terribly. Back home, reeling with dislocation and yearning, John seeks solace, absolution, a future, and most importantly, love.  Although John's story is astonishingly powerful and deeply moving, this extraordinary book has one more ace up its sleeve: Hugo Charteris' intense, atmospheric, drily witty and emotionally searching style. In it there are ingredients which make for one of the great experiences of post-war British literature. A Share of the World burst onto the 1950s literary scene like a truth-incendiary, garnering the author plaudits from critics as disparate as Rosamond Lehmann  'one of the most impressive first novels I have read for a long time'... Francis Wyndham  'the most impressive first novel that has appeared since the war'... and Robert Henriques  'all the characters are without exception almost instantly alive...first-rate'.   The author's daughter, Jane Charteris, looks back at this brilliant book, and provides a unique insight into its author, in an introduction written specially for this edition.

A Share of the World

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