Turning Back The Sun - Softcover

Colin Thubron

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099287684 ISBN 13: 9780099287681

Publisher: Random House Pod, 2002

Synopsis

Far away from the city of his birth, in a frontier town on the edge of tribal wilderness, a doctor tries to resolve the seemingly unreconcilable demands of his public career and his personal feelings. He believes his exile her to be temporary, and youthful memories of the distant city torment him with an unbearable sense of loss. Yet he has grown to love a fellow exile, a woman of fierce independence and strong will, who belongs by nature to the warmth and chaos of the frontier. But, during a summer of drought and disease, the desert erupts into savagery and he is at last confronted by the choice of returning to the city or of remaining with her.

About this title

About the Author

Colin Thubron was born in 1939, and worked in publishing before travelling in North Africa, the Middle East, Russia and China.

From Kirkus Reviews

Outcasts from paradise haunted by death, disease, and drought have a moment of reprieve in this finely crafted--if ultimately hollow--fable by 1991 Booker Prize nominee Thubron (Falling, 1991, etc.). Set in a mythical authoritarian subtropical country between the two World Wars, this is ostensibly the story of a ``purpose town''--a place where ``nobody arrived for pleasure.'' Like protagonist Rayner, who's been sent from the capital to be one of town's two doctors, the citizens come to work, to pioneer, but not to leave--that's forbidden, unless special permission is given. The town itself, where ``nothing is older than a century,'' is surrounded by parched lands where bands of mysterious natives still practice their traditional customs. The despair of this ``conflation of exiles'' is further exacerbated when murdered bodies appear in the town and on the outskirts; a strange disfiguring rash spreads; and a long-endured drought makes the natives bellicose. Rayner yearns for the capital--``the shimmering city on the coast''--and dreams of old friends and loves he knew there. A love affair with dancer Zoe is not enough to cure his obsession; but on a visit to the capital, Rayner finds that paradise is not quite as he remembered. He returns to the town, feeling ``an intangible burden to be lifting''; and on patrol with the army, he witnesses a poignant ceremony in which the natives, hoping to climb back to heaven on their special tree that had stopped growing, try to prevent the sun setting so that everything ``will be all right again.'' The army does not fire on the natives, as they had intended; the rains come; and Rayner realizes that there is still Zoe. Hell is all there is, perhaps, but there are compensations. Atmosphere, mood, and place are all marvelously evoked, but the underlying theme is too spelled out, and not particularly new. Clever, beautiful, but disappointing. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Pod
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0099287684
• ISBN 13: 9780099287681
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208