Golden Child by Claire Adam

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Golden Child by Claire Adam

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Golden Child by Claire Adam

A deeply affecting debut novel set in Trinidad, following the lives of a family as they navigate impossible choices about scarcity, loyalty, and love

WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE - Golden Child is a stunning novel written with force and beauty. Though true to herself, Adam's work stands tall beside icons of her tradition like V.S. Naipaul.--Jennifer Clement, author of Gun Love

Rural Trinidad: a brick house on stilts surrounded by bush; a family, quietly surviving, just trying to live a decent life. Clyde, the father, works long, exhausting shifts at the petroleum plant in southern Trinidad; Joy, his wife, looks after the home. Their two sons, thirteen years old, wake early every morning to travel to the capital, Port of Spain, for school. They are twins but nothing alike: Paul has always been considered odd, while Peter is widely believed to be a genius, destined for greatness.

When Paul goes walking in the bush one afternoon and doesn't come home, Clyde is forced to go looking for him, this child who has caused him endless trouble already, and who he has never really understood. And as the hours turn to days, and Clyde begins to understand Paul's fate, his world shatters--leaving him faced with a decision no parent should ever have to make.

Like the Trinidadian landscape itself, Golden Child is both beautiful and unsettling, a resoundingly human story of aspiration, betrayal, and love.

Praise for Golden Child

In fluid and uncluttered prose, Golden Child weaves an enveloping portrait of an insular social order in which the claustrophobic support of family and neighbors coexists with an omnipresent threat from the same corners.--The New York Times Book Review

A] powerful debut . . . a devastating family portrait--and a fascinating window into Trinidadian society.--People

An] emotionally potent debut novel . . . with a spare, evocative style, Adam (a Trinidad native) evokes the island's complexity during the mid-'80s, when the novel is mostly set: the tenuous relationship between Hindus like Clyde's family and the twins' Catholic schoolmaster, assassinations and abductions hyped by lurid media headlines, resources that attract carpetbagging oil companies but leave the country largely impoverished.--USA Today
Claire Adam was born and raised in Trinidad. She lives in London.
SKU Unavailable
ISBN 13 9780525573005
ISBN 10 0525573003
Title Golden Child
Author Claire Adam
Condition Unavailable
Binding Type Paperback
Publisher Hogarth Press
Year published 2020-01-28
Number of pages 304
Prizes Winner of Desmond Elliott Prize 2019
Cover note Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.