The Shadow Bride - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006542239 ISBN 13: 9780006542230

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Synopsis

His medical studies abroad complete, Dr Betta Singh returns home to Guyana and the household of his widowed mother. But Betta's ideals have changed in his time away and it is not long before terrible quarrels break out between him and his strange, wilful mother.

About this title

From the Back Cover

The story begins in the late 1920s with Betta Singh's return from his medical studies in Dublin to Guyana and the opulent chaos of his mother's household. Mrs. Singh, a curiously vulnerable widow and fiercely possessive mother, wears pants and gives orders like a man. She wants her son to stay with her and open a private practice, but Betta is determined to devote his expertise to those who need it most - his own people, the destitute descendants of immigrants from India. He rejects the insulated world of his mother's home and once again leaves her, accepting an appointment as a Government Medical Officer on a sugar plantation run by British expatriates. In the midst of battling both the malaria that is widespread among the workers and the corruption of the plantation manager. Betta marries - a step which further antagonizes his mother, who has now allied herself with the Pujaree, an influential Hindu religious leader. Ultimately, the myriad of family, religious, and racial conflicts escalate, with consequences that are brutal and far-reaching for all.

From Publishers Weekly

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in England, where it was first published in 1991, this seductive family saga from Guyanese novelist Heath (The Armstrong Trilogy) portrays an idealistic, self-doubting doctor who simultaneously confronts a domineering, religiously obsessed mother; racist, condescending British administrators; tensions among Indians, Creoles, Hindus and Muslims; and his own personal quest for identity. In 1929, Betta Singh, born in Guyana to parents from India, returns from medical studies in Dublin and London to become a government medical officer on a British sugar plantation where impoverished Guyanese natives toil despite malnutrition and malaria. Meanwhile, his controlling, widowed mother, who wears trousers "like a man," has fallen under the spell of a Svengali-like Hindu priest who moves in with her, first as her counselor, then as her bedmate, and whose machinations thwart a reconciliation between mother and son. In musical prose, Heath creates complex, convincing characters?like the dressmaker Lahti, emotionally enslaved to a thug who beats her, and Nen Merriman, self-styled marriage counselor and judge who holds an unofficial court to resolve disputes among Creole neighbors. Heath's modest, unpretentious style undergirds a powerful realism as his subtle analysis of family conflicts builds to a tragic and moving climax.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0006542239
• ISBN 13: 9780006542230
• Binding: Paperback