Sebastian Shakespeare
Far From Home
The Match is about a man trying to make sense of his multi-cultural identity. Born in Colombo and brought up in Manila, Sunny Fernando emigrates to England, where he gives up his engineering degree to become a photographer. But he finds it hard to focus on his place in the world. To paraphrase T S Eliot, he is dislocated from dislocation by dislocation:
In his life he had never felt he knew anything for sure ... the doubt never stopped growing inside, slowly, inexorably distorting everything.
If the themes of exile and emigration seem wearisomely familiar, their execution is less prosaic. Romesh Gunesekera has a lightness of touch and a wry tone which mark him out from many more fashionable novelists.
Sunny's name belies his rather dispiriting parentage. His father is an alcoholic ex-hack and his pianist mother died when he was eight. The first part of the book is set during his childhood in the Philippines. We meet his playmates Robby and Herbie, and his father's best friend Hector, and
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
The first holiday camps had an 'ethos of muscular health as a marker of social respectability, and were alcohol-free. How different from our modern Costa Brava – not to mention the innumerable other coasts around the world now changed forever'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/from-mont-blanc-to-magaluf
'The authorities are able to detain individuals in solitary confinement for up to six months at a secret location', which 'increases the risk to the prisoner of torture'.
@lucyjpop looks at two cases of China's brutal crackdown on free expression.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/xu-zhiyong-thupten-lodoe
'"The Last Colony" is, among other things, part of the campaign to shift the British position through political pressure. As with all good propaganda, Sands’s case is based in truth, if not the whole of it.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/empire-strikes-back