The Guyana Story : From Earliest Times to Independence

In 1903, a young woman sailed from India to Guiana as a “coolie”—the British name for indentured laborers who replaced the newly emancipated slaves on sugar plantations all around the world. Pregnant and traveling alone, this woman, like so many coolies, disappeared into history. In "Coolie Woman"—shortlisted for the 2014 Orwell Prize—her great-granddaughter Gaiutra Bahadur embarks on a journey into the past to find her. Traversing three continents and trawling through countless colonial archives, Bahadur excavates not only her great-grandmother’s story but also the repressed history of some quarter of a million other coolie women, shining a light on their complex lives.

 Shunned by society, and sometimes in mortal danger, many coolie women were either runaways, widows, or outcasts. Many of them left husbands and families behind to migrate alone in epic sea voyages—traumatic “middle passages”—only to face a life of hard labor, dismal living conditions, and, especially, sexual exploitation. As Bahadur explains, however, it is precisely their sexuality that makes coolie women stand out as figures in history. Greatly outnumbered by men, they were able to use sex with their overseers to gain various advantages, an act that often incited fatal retaliations from coolie men and sometimes larger uprisings of laborers against their overlords. Complex and unpredictable, sex was nevertheless a powerful tool.

 Examining this and many other facets of these remarkable women’s lives, "Coolie Woman" is a meditation on survival, a gripping story of a double diaspora—from India to the West Indies in one century, Guyana to the United States in the next—that is at once a search for one’s roots and an exploration of gender and power, peril and opportunity. 

Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

In flight from the tame familiarity of home in Bombay, a twenty-six-year-old cricket journalist chucks his job and arrives in Guyana, a forgotten colonial society of raw, mesmerizing beauty. Amid beautiful, decaying wooden houses in Georgetown, on coastal sugarcane plantations, and in the dark rainforest interior scavenged by diamond hunters, he grows absorbed with the fantastic possibilities of this new place where descendants of the enslaved and indentured have made a new world. Ultimately, to fulfill his purpose, he prepares to mount an adventure of his own. His journey takes him beyond Guyanese borders, and his companion will be the feisty, wild-haired Jan. 

In this dazzling novel, propelled by a singularly forceful voice, Rahul Bhattacharya captures the heady adventures of travel, the overheated restlessness of youth, and the paradoxes of searching for life’s meaning in the escape from home.

The Sly Company of People Who Care

Pauline Melville conjures up vivid pictures both of savanna and forest and of city life in South America where love is often trumped by disaster. Unforgettable characters illuminate theme and plot: Sonny, the strange, beautiful and isolate son of Beatrice and Danny, the brother and sister who have a passionate affair at the time of the solar eclipse in 1919; Father Napier, the sandy-haired evangelist whom the Indians perceive as a giant grasshopper; Chofy McKinnon the modern Indian, torn between savanna life and urban future. This is a novel that embraces nearly a century, large in scope but intimate as a whisper, where laughter is never far from the scene of tragedy; a parable of miscegenation and racial elusiveness, of nature defying culture, magic confronting rationalism and of the eternally rebellious nature of love.

The Ventriloquist's Tale

A tale of a doomed crew beating their way up-river through the jungles of Guyana. In this novel, first published in 1960, can be traced the poetic vision, the themes and the designs of Harris's subsequent work, which included The Guyana Quartet.

Palace of the Peacock

Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana are among the least-known places in South America: nine hundred miles of muddy coastline giving way to a forest so dense that even today there are virtually no roads through it; a string of rickety coastal towns situated between the mouths of the Orinoco and Amazon Rivers, where living is so difficult that as many Guianese live abroad as in their homelands; an interior of watery, green anarchy where border disputes are often based on ancient Elizabethan maps, where flora and fauna are still being discovered, where thousands of rivers remain mostly impassable. And under the lens of John Gimlette—brilliantly offbeat, irreverent, and canny—these three small countries are among the most wildly intriguing places on earth.

On an expedition that will last three months, he takes us deep into a remarkable world of swamp and jungle, from the hideouts of runaway slaves to the vegetation-strangled remnants of penal colonies and forts, from “Little Paris” to a settlement built around a satellite launch pad. He recounts the complicated, often surprisingly bloody, history of the region—including the infamous 1978 cult suicide at Jonestown—and introduces us to its inhabitants: from the world’s largest ants to fluorescent purple frogs to head-crushing jaguars; from indigenous tribes who still live by sorcery to descendants of African slaves, Dutch conquerors, Hmong refugees, Irish adventurers, and Scottish outlaws; from high-tech pirates to hapless pioneers for whom this stunning, strangely beautiful world (“a sort of X-rated Garden of Eden”) has become home by choice or by force.

In "Wild Coast, "John Gimlette guides us through a fabulously entertaining, eye-opening—and sometimes jaw-dropping—journey.

Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge

Gerald Durrell is on his way to South America on a quest to capture specimens that have never been brought back alive before. And it turns into quite an adventure when he encounters timid squirrel monkeys, wailing rats, an overly affectionate bird christened Cuthbert and a bad-tempered anaconda! Bringing back a living collection of animals can be frustrating, exciting and damned hard work, but it's never dull!

Three Singles to Adventure

This stormy story tells of Ramgolall, a cattle-minder on the coast of Guyana.

Corentyne Thunder

This comparative study of two republics examines the conditions that determine regime survival in less developed countries. The author looks at the functioning of political elites and the strategies employed, such as ethnic mobilization, patronage and coercion, to gain and maintain control of the state. He argues that political and economic development can only be adequately advanced by the resolution of the conflict between regime survival and the satisfaction of collective needs. If these collective needs are met, equitable mass participation in the domestic political process must be guaranteed.

The Costs of Regime Survival: Racial Mobilization, Elite Domination and Control of the State in Guyana and Trinidad

The saga of Jonestown didn’t end on the day in November 1978 when more than nine hundred Americans died in a mass murder-suicide in the Guyanese jungle. While only a handful of people present at the agricultural project survived that day in Jonestown, more than eighty members of Peoples Temple, led by Jim Jones, were elsewhere in Guyana on that day, and thousands more members of the movement still lived in California. Emmy-nominated writer Leigh Fondakowski, who is best known for her work on the play and HBO film "The Laramie Project", spent three years traveling the United States to interview these survivors, many of whom have never talked publicly about the tragedy. Using more than two hundred hours of interview material, Fondakowski creates intimate portraits of these survivors as they tell their unforgettable stories.

Collectively this is a record of ordinary people, stigmatized as cultists, who after the Jonestown massacre were left to deal with their grief, reassemble their lives, and try to make sense of how a movement born in a gospel of racial and social justice could have gone so horrifically wrong—taking with it the lives of their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters. As these survivors look back, we learn what led them to join the Peoples Temple movement, what life in the church was like, and how the trauma of Jonestown’s end still affects their lives decades later.

What emerges are portrayals both haunting and hopeful—of unimaginable sadness, guilt, and shame but also resilience and redemption. Weaving her own artistic journey of discovery throughout the book in a compelling historical context, Fondakowski delivers, with both empathy and clarity, one of the most gripping, moving, and humanizing accounts of Jonestown ever written.



Stories from Jonestown

THE TRAIL OF DIPLOMACY: The Guyana-Venezuela Border Issue

In the first published account of the massive U.S. covert intervention in British Guiana between 1953 and 1969, Stephen G. Rabe uncovers a Cold War story of imperialism, gender bias, and racism.

When the South American colony now known as Guyana was due to gain independence from Britain in the 1960s, U.S. officials in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations feared it would become a communist nation under the leadership of Cheddi Jagan, a Marxist who was very popular among the South Asian (mostly Indian) majority. Although to this day the CIA refuses to confirm or deny involvement, Rabe presents evidence that CIA funding, through a program run by the AFL-CIO, helped foment the labor unrest, race riots, and general chaos that led to Jagan's replacement in 1964. The political leader preferred by the United States, Forbes Burnham, went on to lead a twenty-year dictatorship in which he persecuted the majority Indian population. 

Considering race, gender, religion, and ethnicity along with traditional approaches to diplomatic history, Rabe's analysis of this Cold War tragedy serves as a needed corrective to interpretations that depict the Cold War as an unsullied U.S. triumph.

U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story

Thirty years of family secrets. Three generations of women. One family heirloom that could change everything. 

When she ran away from her childhood home in Guyana, Rika swore that she would never return. Cut off from her family, she has fought hard to make a life for herself and daughter, Inky, in London. 

Now, over thirty years later, Rika’s cantankerous, wheelchair-bound mother, Dorothea, arrives in London. But as old wounds re-open, Dorothea and Rika are further apart than ever. 

Inky soon learns that her grandmother is sitting on a small fortune. As she uncovers the secrets of the past one by one, she unravels the tragedy that tore her mother and grandmother apart. But nothing can prepare her, or Rika, for Dorothea’s final, unexpected revelation. 

An epic, mesmerizing tale of tragic loss, the strength of words left unspoken, and the redeeming power of love.

The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q

Everyman Masters, sixty-five, begins a spiritual journey through the mysterious Caribbean carnival of masks.

The Guyana Quartet

In this book an attempt is made to probe more carefully the processes by which social and ethnic problems, as these pertain to Caribbean countries, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, are conveyed to the political arena and the mechanisms by which they determine critical outcomes. The authors of this book have accordingly distinguished between predisposing factors and what are described as triggering mechanisms. The factors that trigger dramatic changes will differ between Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago. In short, while in some respects these societies are similar, in others, there are dramatic differences in their respective histories and political developments. This study begins with a survey of the literature on race relations and their connections with politics; it then proceeds to examine the context for the insertion of the two major groups into these societies, the emergence of ethnic groups, and their relationships with political organizations. The nature and politics of the leaders are then analyzed along with the political structures with a view to identifying what factors were responsible for the differing political experiences of both countries.

Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana: Race and Politics in Two Plural Societies

Burdened with a heritage of both Spanish and British colonization and imperialism, Guyana is today caught between its colonial past, its efforts to achieve the consciousness of nationhood, and the need of its diverse subgroups to maintain their own identity. "Stains on My Name, War in My Veins" chronicles the complex struggles of the citizens of Guyana to form a unified national culture against the pulls of ethnic, religious, and class identities.
Drawing on oral histories and a close study of daily life in rural Guyana, Brackette E. Williams examines how and why individuals and groups in their quest for recognition as a “nation” reproduce ethnic chauvinism, racial stereotyping, and religious bigotry. By placing her ethnographic study in a broader historical context, the author develops a theoretical understanding of the relations among various dimensions of personal identity in the process of nation building.

Stains on My Name, War in My Veins: Guyana and the Politics of Cultural Struggle

Since his retirement from the Navajo Tribal Police, Joe Leaphorn has occasionally been enticed to return to work by former colleagues who seek his help when they need to solve a particularly puzzling crime. They ask because Leaphorn, aided by officers Jim Chee and Bernie Manuelito, always delivers.

But this time the problem is with an old case of Joe's--his "last case," unsolved, is one that continues to haunt him. And with Chee and Bernie just back from their honeymoon, Leaphorn is pretty much on his own.

The original case involved a priceless, one-of-a-kind Navajo rug supposedly destroyed in a fire. Suddenly, what looks like the same rug turns up in a magazine spread. And the man who brings the photo to Leaphorn's attention has gone missing. Leaphorn must pick up the threads of a crime he'd thought impossible to untangle. Not only has the passage of time obscured the details, but it also appears that there's a murderer still on the loose.

New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman is at the top of his form in this atmospheric and riveting novel set amid the rugged beauty of his beloved Southwest.

The Shape Shifter (Leaphorn  & Chee, #18)

A failed revolutionary attempt drives the hero of Hudson's novel to seek refuge in the primeval forests of south-western Venezuela. There, in the 'green mansions' of the title, Abel encounters the wood-nymph Rima, the last survivor of a mysterious aboriginal race. The love that flowers between them is soon overshadowed by cruelty and sorrow... One of the acknowledged masters of natural history writing, W. H. Hudson forms an important link between nineteenth-century Romanticism and the twentieth-century ecological movement.

First published in 1904 and a bestseller after its reissue a dozen years later, "Green Mansions" offers its readers a poignant meditation on the loss of wilderness, the dream of a return to nature, and the bitter reality of the encounter between savage and civilized man.

Green Mansions

Set in Guyana, this is the story of Mama King, trapped by age and infirmity, but ultimately indomitable. It is a protest at institutions that isolate, and a way of life that denies respect and responsibility for the weak.

Frangipani House

Reddix is a Kindred warrior with RTS—a debilitating disease that forces him to endure the emotions of others like a physical invasion every time he is around anyone. Nina is the girl he dreams of but can never have. Will he open up enough for Nina to heal him or will his fate remain Shadowed?

Shadowed (Brides of the Kindred,  #8)

A breathtakingly original work of history that uncovers a massive slave revolt that almost changed the face of the Americas

On Sunday, February 27, 1763, thousands of slaves in the Dutch colony of Berbice—in present-day Guyana—launched a massive rebellion which came amazingly close to succeeding. Surrounded by jungle and savannah, the revolutionaries (many of them African-born) and Europeans struck and parried for an entire year. In the end, the Dutch prevailed because of one unique advantage—their ability to get soldiers and supplies from neighboring colonies and from Europe. "Blood on the River" is the explosive story of this little-known revolution, one that almost changed the face of the Americas.
Drawing on nine hundred interrogation transcripts collected by the Dutch when the Berbice rebellion finally collapsed, and which were subsequently buried in Dutch archives, historian Marjoleine Kars reconstructs an extraordinarily rich day-by-day account of this pivotal event. "Blood on the River" provides a rare in-depth look at the political vision of enslaved people at the dawn of the Age of Revolution and introduces us to a set of real characters, vividly drawn against the exotic tableau of a riverine world of plantations, rainforest, and Carib allies who controlled a vast South American hinterland.
An astonishing original work of history, "Blood on the River" will change our understanding of revolutions, slavery, and of the story of freedom in the New World.

Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast

Musical Life in Guyana: History and Politics of Controlling Creativity (Caribbean Studies Series)

When the author's husband, a civil engineer, told her they were going to Guyana. she replied: "Wonderful. I've always wanted to go to Africa", a self-critical comment she quotes to indicate how little is known about the country

She spent two years there in Georgetown on the narrow coastal trip where 750,000 lived . As she emphasises, the population is multi-racial. Most of the original, inhabitants, known as the Amer-indians, live in the interior. When European settlers needed labour for their sugar plantations they imported slaves from Africa.

With the abolition of slavery in 1833, the Europeans brought indentured labour from the East Indies and India itself. As free men they hoped to earn enough to return home but few did and they now form the largest single racial group.

Bacon sympathetically analyses the two widely dissimilar races, the Africans endearing and child-like with a slapstick sense of humour even when very poor, and the East Indians reserved and less boisterous. She also gives a refreshingly frank picture of life for the British in Georgetown, especially the women who, insufficiently occupied, devoted most of their time to gossip and grumbling at cocktail parties.

Poor, backward and with a humid climate, Guyana did not attract, she suggests, able administrators, although the country needed the services of men of exceptional quality. Sometimes they emerged by accident, like the first real cattle rancher, a Scot named Melville, who came prospecting at the end of last century and, ill with malaria, was deserted and later rescued by Amerindians and founded a powerful oligarchy.

Bacon's expeditions into the interior, while explaining the nature of the sugar, rice and bauxite industries which are the mainstay of the economy, also give her book the liveliest human passages. Exploration by river, in impossibly small and unstable craft, also hold the menace of a quick death by piranha or anaconda or, on land, an invasion of primitive quarters by legions of cockroaches.

Back in Georgetown, she wrote book reviews for a local paper which was a mass of misprints and pictures printed upside down, reflecting their attitude that "anything will do". A pompous article by a bishop concluded. "Life, my friends, is not all beer and skittles".

Margaret Bacon has illumined by sensitive observation, gentle humour and intelligent interpretation one of the world's less well known corners. The photographs, her own, enrich the feeling of exploration she so subtly sustains.

The author writes of the original Amerindians, "decimated by the first Europeans"; descendants of African slaves, whose restlessness she understands because of their history; reserved, more sophisticated East Indians; cheery West Indians, and Portuguese. She speaks of their poverty gaity, and talents.

There was Singh, the sensitive East Indian gardener who "delighted in all living things"; cheerful Myra, the maid who, presented with an egg-timer, boiled it with the eggs; Miss Macatee a suspicious lodging-house keeper modelled on an English seaside landlady on the doorstep of the jungle; the East Indian wife of a quarry owner, whose conversation "came out of Cranford" and who took the author to "wash her hands" to a box-like structure intended for more primitive purposes and (conveniently?) overhanging a precipice.

Journey To Guyana

Swaying palm trees, golden beaches, a hammock at siesta time, and sunset rum cocktails: this is the bare minimum of a relaxing Caribbean holiday. Throw in Calypso music, Hindu temples and Parisian cafes selling coffee and croissants and you're close to experiencing the unique melting pot of cultures in Guyana, Guyane and Suriname. Each tiny country is home to a diverse mix of cultures and yet they have all kept their own identities and traditions. Few places boast the cultural and culinary fusion of this 'Caribbean corner' of South America.

 

·         Perfect for anyone who prefers to travel without the tourists: This concise guidebook covers places that are simply not featured in any other travel guide.

·         Objective recommendations of great places to stay and eat.

·         Fascinating insights into the region’s history and culture.

·         Highlights map of the region plus detailed street maps to important towns and cities.

·         Slim enough to fit in your pocket.

 

With unparalleled depth and breadth of coverage of this vibrant region, the Footprint"focus "guide to Guyana, Guyane and Suriname will help you get the best out of your adventure without weighing you down

Guyana, Guyane & Suriname

Astonishingly vivid, bawdy, and tempestuous, this novel is a cautionary tale about greed and class conflict in postcolonial Guyana. Comparings life, built on the solid rhythms of farming and caring for the land.

Black Midas

Walter Rodney claimed developing countries were heirs to uneven development and ethnic disequilibrium, including continued forms of oppression from the capitalist countries and their own leaders. In Guyana, ethnic chauvinism persisted before and after independence from Britain. Rodney was disturbed by the inability of intellectuals to share common cause with the masses, thus ensuring that they would be unable to contribute to uplifting their talents or participate in the growth of the nation. Guyana and the Caribbean were subject to sugar and slave traffic that constituted cheap labor for the plantations and buttressed the capitalist-industrial system. A significant byproduct of that system was the master-slave relationship; a no-less iniquitous consequence was an active racism. Thus, social inequality became the heritage of Guyanese and Caribbean history. These social evils have influenced all of the social, economic, and political institutions in Guyana. Race, class, and color became the determinants of social value and how the various racial groups responded to them is both the triumph and the tragedy of Guyanese nationalism. Rodney belongs in that pantheon of philosophers whose names adorn the history of the Caribbean and elsewhere. He has sought to lift the Caribbean people from the victimization of history and the poverty of material circumstance.

The Legacy of Walter Rodney in Guyana and the Caribbean

My Bones And My Flute

Journey Back To Watooka: A Story Of Guyana

An unputdownable story of a woman in search of the truth, the man she falls in love with, and the devastation of the Second World War.
1934, Guyana. All her life, Mary Grace has wanted to know the truth about who her parents really are. As the mixed-race daughter of two white plantation owners, her childhood has been clouded by whispered rumours, and the circumstances of her birth have been kept a closely guarded secret... 

Aunt Winnie is the only person Mary Grace can confide in. Feeling lost and lonely, her place in society uncertain, Mary Grace decides to forge her own path in the world. And she finds herself unexpectedly falling for charming and affluent Jock Campbell, a planter with revolutionary ideas.

But, with the onset of the Second World War, their lives will be changed forever. And Mary Grace and Jock will be faced with the hardest decision of all – to fight for freedom or to follow their hearts...

An utterly compelling and evocative story about the heart-breaking choices men and women had to make during a time of unimaginable change. Perfect for fans of "
  The Secret Wife
" and "
  Island of Secrets
".

What readers are saying about "The Girl From The Sugar Plantation"

‘I loved, loved, loved this. An easy 5 stars. One of my top reads of this year.’ "Goodreads reviewer", 5 stars

‘I absolutely adore Sharon Maas's books - she is one of my favourite authors, someone whose stories give me hours of reading pleasure. And this wonderful book is one of her best! I loved this book from start to finish, savouring every word, the author's beautiful prose. An evocative, powerful story of a family and a country. LOVED every word and I absolutely cannot wait for more from this amazing author.’ Renita D’Silva, 5 stars

‘"The Girl from the Sugar Plantation" is a beautifully written story that has it all. I whizzed through this beautiful book, unable to put it down. A wonderful and heartrending story with lovely characters. Very highly recommended.’ "Goodreads reviewer", 5 stars

‘This is a powerful book of love, relationships and trust What great writing from a great author... Five Stars!’ "Stardust Book Reviews", 5 stars

 ‘I practically read this book in one sitting. I became invested in this story from the opening line and it held my attention to the very last. I highly recommend this book, not only to lovers of historical fiction, but anyone who just loves to read!’ "Goodreads reviewer", 5 stars

‘This novel again read like a film, the setting is stunningly vivid and the colours build up to form quite a picture of history and culture. The plot is nicely done, steady and builds to a climax of twists and secrets. "The Girl from the Sugar Plantation" is a fascinating read!’ "The Book Trail", 5 stars

'The gripping, evocative and poignant story of a young girl's difficult transition into womanhood amidst a time of turmoil.’ "Mrs Blog’s Books"

‘Loved it!!! Really absorbing story... Sharon Maas weaves a fine tale and remains one of my go-to authors.’ "MetLineReader"


The Girl from the Sugar Plantation: A Gripping and Emotional Family Saga of Love and Secrets

A Survey of Guyanese History: A Collection of Historical Essays and Articles by a Guyanese Scholar

Guyana: History and Literature examines Guyana's growth as a nation over 350 years. 64 reviews of works of history, biography, memoirs, fiction, even a play and an interview, all of which discuss politics, ethnicity, culture, African slavery, Indian indenture and fortunes of the two best known Guyanese politicians - Dr Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham. The volume offers the variety and scope of an anthology, perceptions and insights of a literary critic, elegance and style of fine writing, and the thrill of fresh revelation and discovery.

Guyana: History and Literature

Guyana History, The Early Years: Independence and the Burnham Era, Society, Population, Ethnic Groups, Economy, Government and Politics

Supports the national curriculum standards Culture; Time, Continuity, and Change; People, Places, and Environments; individual Development and Identity; Individuals, Groups, and Institutions; Power, Authority, and Governance; Production, Distribution, and Consumption; Science, Technology, and Society; and Global Connections as outlined by the National Council for the Social Studies.

Guyana in Pictures

Set like his first novel in The Guyana Quartet in the former colony of British Guiana, the second novel The Far Journey of Oudin is further proof of the intensity and originality of Wilson Harris's imaginative power and literary skill. Against a background of swamp, jungle and savannah a strange drama is played out in which the chief characters are the money-lender Ram - an evil, presiding genius - the illegitimate Beti whom all men desire, and Oudin the beggar who works for several masters and belongs to none. Focusing on the traumatising effects of slavery on West Indian society, the novel depicts how the new-found freedoms and perceived social progress experienced by former peasants mask the fact that the old master-slave structure is reasserting itself among the descendants of an exploited people.

The Far Journey of Oudin

In the spirit of Susan Faludi's "In the Darkroom" and Edmund de Waal's "Hare with the Amber Eyes" comes an engrossing, epic saga of one family’s experiences on both sides of World War II, questioning our notions of victim and perpetrator and the lasting effects of war and trauma through the generations of one family.


In March 1942, Mieke Eerkens’ father was a ten-year-old boy living in the Dutch East Indies. When the Japanese invaded the island he, his family, and one hundred thousand other Dutch civilians were interned in a concentration camp and forced into hard labor for three years. After the Japanese surrendered, Mieke’s father and his family were set free in a country that plunged immediately into civil war.

Across the globe in the Netherlands, police carried a crying five-year-old girl out of her home at war’s end, abandoned and ostracized as a daughter of Nazi sympathizers. This was Mieke's mother. She would be left on the street in front of her sealed home as her parents were taken away and imprisoned in the same camps where the country’s Jews had recently been held. Many years later, Mieke’s parents met, got married, and moved to California, where she and her siblings were born. While her parents lived far from the events of their past, the effects of the war would continue to be felt in their daily lives and in the lives of their children.

"All Ships Follow Me" moves from Indonesia to the Netherlands to the United States, and spans generations as Mieke recounts her parents' lives during and after the war, and travels with them in the present day to the sites of their childhood in an attempt to understand their experiences and how it formed them. "All Ships Follow Me" is a deeply personal, sweeping saga of the wounds of war, and the way trauma can be passed down through generations.

All Ships Follow Me: A Family Memoir of War Across Three Continents

Away from the Atlantic coastal belt where the majority of Guyana's citizens dwell, deep in the country's interior, lies a very different reality - an intoxicating mix of both dense virgin rainforest bordering on the claustrophobic and vividly contrasting open savannas as far as the eye can see. This is home to an eclectic bunch of mammals, reptiles, birds and various Amerindian tribes, whose lives and customs have remained surprisingly intact for hundreds of years despite the pervasive onslaught of globalisation. It may not always remain this way however if a much mooted road improvement project between northern Brazil and Guyana gets the go-ahead.

Guyana in many ways now finds itself at a geopolitical watershed mirroring its geographic location, the mighty Essequibo River, the continent's third largest, sandwiched in between the Orinoco in Venezuela and the Amazon in Brazil.
This is a place difficult to penetrate but where persistence and dogged resilience pay off handsomely.
"Guises of Guyana - Peering into the Interior" lifts the lid on some of the more remarkable people, places, flora &amp; fauna found within this wondrous country's heartland.

Guyana

The Guyana Story : From Earliest Times to Independence

Odeen Ishmael

Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

Gaiutra Bahadur

The Sly Company of People Who Care

Rahul Bhattacharya

The Ventriloquist's Tale

Pauline Melville

Palace of the Peacock

Wilson Harris

Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge

John Gimlette

Three Singles to Adventure

Gerald Durrell

Corentyne Thunder

Edgar Mittelholzer

The Costs of Regime Survival: Racial Mobilization, Elite Domination and Control of the State in Guyana and Trinidad

Percy C. Hintzen

Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture

Gaiutra Bahadur

Stories from Jonestown

Leigh Fondakowski

THE TRAIL OF DIPLOMACY: The Guyana-Venezuela Border Issue

Odeen Ishmael

U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story

Stephen G. Rabe

The Small Fortune of Dorothea Q

Sharon Maas

The Guyana Quartet

Wilson Harris

Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana: Race and Politics in Two Plural Societies

Ann Marie Bissessar

Stains on My Name, War in My Veins: Guyana and the Politics of Cultural Struggle

Brackette F. Williams

The Shape Shifter (Leaphorn & Chee, #18)

Tony Hillerman

Green Mansions

William H. Hudson

Frangipani House

Beryl Gilroy

Shadowed (Brides of the Kindred, #8)

Evangeline Anderson

Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast

Marjoleine Kars

Musical Life in Guyana: History and Politics of Controlling Creativity (Caribbean Studies Series)

Vibert C. Cambridge

Journey To Guyana

Margaret Bacon

Guyana, Guyane & Suriname

Ben Box

Black Midas

Jan Carew

The Legacy of Walter Rodney in Guyana and the Caribbean

Arnold Gibbons

My Bones And My Flute

Edgar Mittelholzer

Journey Back To Watooka: A Story Of Guyana

Steve Connolly

The Girl from the Sugar Plantation: A Gripping and Emotional Family Saga of Love and Secrets

Sharon Maas

A Survey of Guyanese History: A Collection of Historical Essays and Articles by a Guyanese Scholar

Winston MC Gowan

Guyana: History and Literature

Frank Birbalsingh

Guyana History, The Early Years: Independence and the Burnham Era, Society, Population, Ethnic Groups, Economy, Government and Politics

Henry Albinson

Guyana in Pictures

Charles F. Gritzner

The Far Journey of Oudin

Wilson Harris

All Ships Follow Me: A Family Memoir of War Across Three Continents

Mieke Eerkens

Guises of Guyana (print format)

Alex Morritt