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A heartrending novel about one man’s search for meaning in a difficult life A child ridiculed for his weight, a son overshadowed by a favored brother, a husband who falls short of his wife’s ambitions, an old man with a broken heart… As Orbits’s life passes, he doggedly pursues a simple dream — a little place in the country where a family might thrive — while wondering if he can ever shake free of the tragedies that seem to define him. Fatboy Fall Down is the lush and heartbreaking musings of a man trying to understand his place in the world. Though shot through with sadness, Fatboy Fall Down is also full of surprising moments of wry humor, and Rabindranath Maharaj's deft touch underscores the resilience of the human spirit.
Today is a new day but yesterday was the same day. In this disquieting new work from award-winning novelist Rabindranath Maharaj, a man awakens in a strange institution called the Compound with no memory of his past. Struggling to make sense of his surroundings, he is skeptical of the administrators who try to convince him he is mad and dangerous, and begins to suspect he has been the subject of recurring experiments, which have caused episodes of amnesia. In dreamlike prose Maharaj weaves a story of fragments, where our narrator comes to believe that he was once a comic book writer who warned in his stories that the reliance on artificial intelligence would make the imagination obsolete and subversive. As the narrator searches for clues he may have left for himself before his memory loss, both he and the reader learn of Adjacentland, a primitive land of misfits and outsiders. It is only in Adjacentland that the imagination has survived. With a motley group of other inmates from the Compound, the narrator decides to make his way there, but during the journey he discovers a terrible secret about himself and his companions.
“For so long I imagined I was making some long journey which would make sense when I had reached the end, but now I realize there are no journeys, just imprints in other people’s dusty footsteps.” -- from Journey of Angels Recognized for his first collection of short fiction, The Interloper, with a nomination for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, Rabindranath Maharaj displays that distinct talent again in The Book of Ifs and Buts. Part of our new Vintage Tales series, these stories tell the experience of immigrants as they take up new lives, often alone, in strange lands. With passion and a discreet comic sensibility, Maharaj brings poignancy and enduring beauty to lives that prosper, suffer, endure heartbreak and realize dreams.
Trapped in a loveless marriage, Stephen Sagar returns eagerly to his native Trinidad when he is commissioned by a powerful island politician to write his biography. Expecting to discover a lost innocence, Stephen is at once disillusioned - old friends are no longer recognizable and strangers view him with indifference or hostility. To piece together his own past, he explores the lush island landscape and encounters a woman who once loved him. In her need to love again, his own longing begins to awaken and intensify.
A Perfect Pledge is at once a beautifully detailed novel about family life, a lively and abundant portrait of Trinidadian society and an ambitious, universal story of striving and strife. Following four decades of tumult – both national and domestic – this third novel by acclaimed author Rabindranath Maharaj is both deeply perceptive and strikingly unsentimental; it is full of singular characters and memorable, often hilarious dialogue. A Perfect Pledge is a major addition both to Canadian literature and to the literature of the Caribbean. The novel begins with the birth of a child to Narpat and Dulari in the village of Lengua in the late 1950s. Geevan, known universally as Jeeves, is th...
Rabindranath R Maharaj was descended from a long line of Brahmin priests and trained as a Yogi. He meditated for many hours each day, but gradually disillusionment set in. In DEATH OF A GURU he describes vividly and honestly Hindu life and customs, tracing his difficult search for meaning and his struggle to choose between Hinduism and Christ. At a time when Eastern mysticism and religion fascinate many in the West, Maharaj offers fresh and important insights from the perspective of his own experience. DEATH OF A GURU has long been an excellent seller on HCB's backlist. It is the best-known Hindu to Christianity conversion story and has been used widely for evangelistic purposes. This edition carries an exciting new cover.
'The way I see it, a country with a stupid shape like this one can't have too much smart people in it.' On the contrary, as Reuben's diatribe reveals, 'paper-bag shaped' Trinidad is full of schemers and dreamers. Maharaj's characters struggle heroically, though sometimes comically and oddly, to make their mark on the earth. It is as if the more frustrating their outward circumstances, the more intense their inner lives. Bashir Ali, the librarian, has developed an intimate relationship with his books, and a passionate hatred of their borrowers. 'Bhaji and rice! You put bhaji and rice on top of Virginia!' Hoobnath Hingoo, the metalwork technician, imagines a dire fate for the arrogant young en...
Hilarious and poignant, Homer in Flight draws a brilliant picture of a chronic malcontent roving from high-rise to housing development along the 401 and the QEW. Homer remains utterly displaced, not because of what other people do or don't do, but because he lives in his imagination instead of embracing an imperfect but fairly benign reality.
The astonishing stories in The Interloper capture the moment when ambivalence floods the new immigrant's consciousness. Regret and nostalgia take turns overwhelming and being overwhelmed by rosy expectations, and only drastic measures stave off paralysis and ruin.