William Brett

Intoxicating Africa

Whiteman

By

Portobello 288pp £10.99 order from our bookshop

Tony D’Souza spent several years working for the Peace Corps in Ivory Coast, and Whiteman is a book based on his time there. Billed as a novel, it reads more like a collection of autobiographical short stories and is closely based on the author’s experience. The narrator, Jack Diaz, is a young American working for the fictional Potable Water Institute. Jack, prevented from establishing a water supply by lack of funding, instead teaches the villagers about Aids, which was D’Souza’s principal duty as a Peace Corps volunteer.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • Start your week with a dose of Russian Revolutionary zeal. Donald Rayfield reviews Tobie Mathew's 'Greetings From t… ,
    • A treat from the LR Archive: exactly 20 years ago, Malcolm Bradbury reviewed John Updike's 'Bech at Bay' ,
    • ‘When bullets come close, the noise they make as they go past changes from a zing to a crack’ John Lanchester's dy… ,
    • Man with a Bloody Paintbrush: Robin Simon on Lucian Freud ,
    • Jane Ridley reviews The Diaries of Kenneth Rose (ed. D R Thorpe) ,
    • ‘Look,’ says Trump. ‘The fact is I’m only human.’ On the evidence of this book that point is debatable. From the A… ,
    • From our December/January issue - here's John Banville's review of Colm Tóibín on the fathers of Wilde, Yeats and J… ,
    Follow Us