Whenever I can only dream of traveling for several reasons (budget, work, pandemic, name it), I always love doing armchair traveling by either reading novels or books set in a particular place, watching movies, TV series, vlogs, or documentaries, and just researching some photos and stories from different places.
Sometimes, I would challenge myself to check out places that I can’t imagine going to. Perhaps they’re too far, my passport will not allow me to travel there easily, or this lifetime is just not enough to actually visit every part of the world.
As I was browsing for books, I came across a very interesting recently-published book by a Guyanese author Roy Heath which could possibly paint me a picture about the life in Guyana.
I found an excerpt and synopsis of the book from Penguin UK website and it made me look forward to acquire a copy and read the book:
A Book About Guyana: The Murderer by Roy Heath
‘For me life hasn’t got dreams, success and all that damn nonsense. Life is full of shadows: some of them soft and others conceal a hammer.’
Roy Heath, The Murderer (1978)
Galton Flood is a lonely man, restless and ill at ease with his family. He leaves his home in Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, for a remote township, and the first of a string of precarious jobs. Meeting Gemma, his landlord’s daughter, appears to offer a first chance of meaningful connection – maybe even happiness. But there is a darkness inside Galton, and soon jealousy and paranoia lead him to fatally, violently unravel.
With this haunting portrait of a mind undone, celebrated Guyanese writer Roy Heath evocatively recreates the country of his youth: its rivers, townships and tenement yards, and the tensions shimmering below the surface of a community.
So many books, so little time! I can’t wait to read this!