Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Fiction Literary

Home and Back

by (author) Arnold Harrichand Itwaru

Publisher
TSAR Publications
Initial publish date
Jan 2001
Category
Literary
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780920661949
    Publish Date
    Jan 2001
    List Price
    $16.95

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

After residing uneasily in Canada for over twenty years, Deo returns to Guyana, having dreampt always of coming home, but finds there a disconcerting homelessness where every item of his memory has been violated. His mother is dying. He is a stranger to everyone else. There is emptiness where his father once lived. Dismay and sorrow and terror are etched in the lives of everyone around. It is within this that Deo struggles to make sense of himself, and the things which have fallen apart around him, the memory of his past clashing against a tortured present and questionable future.

Home and Back is a powerful and merciless indictment of modern, postcolonial West Indies. At the same time Itwaru brings us a touching lyrical meditation on growth and loss, the departure from home and life lived between remembering and forgetting in an alien elsewhere. With artistic maturity and insight, Itwaru offers a visceral understanding of community and pays homage to the struggles for integrity and dignity within the vicissitutes of harsh reality.

?twaru often reads like a Gordimer, Soyinka or Achebe in his dedicated pursuit of the truth . . . and mincing not a single word, he leaves us wordless . . .??unday Observer (India)

? . . powerful, involving reading . . .??ooks in Canada

About the author

Contributor Notes

Arnold Harrichand Itwaru is the author of the modern classic Shanti and eleven other books. He was born in Guyana and resides in Toronto. A visual artist as well, he writes compellingly on a wide range of subjects. In Guyana he received two natonal awards for his poetry. He is currently a lecturer at the University of Toronto. Home and Back is his thirteenth book and fourth book of fiction.

Editorial Reviews

“twaru often reads like a Gordimer, Soyinka or Achebe in his dedicated pursuit of the truth . . . and mincing not a single word, he leaves us wordless . . .??unday Observer (India)? . . powerful, involving reading . . .??ooks in Canada