The Book Of The Heathen
Robert Edric
  • Published: 15 July 2001
  • ISBN: 9780552999250
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $26.99

The Book Of The Heathen

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Robert Edric's breakout book, a stunning novel set in colonial Congo

1897. In an isolated station in the Belgian Congo, an Englishman awaits trial for the murder of a native child. Imprisoned in a makeshift gaol, Nicholas Frere awaits the arrival of the Company's official investigator, while his friend, James Frasier, attempts to determine the circumstances which surround the charge.

The world around them is rapidly changing: the horrors of the Belgian Congo are becoming known and the flow of its once-fabulous wealth is drying up. Unrest flares unstoppably into violence.

Frere's coming trial will seek to determine considerably more than the killing of a child. But at the heart of this conflict lies a secret so dark, so unimaginable, that one man must be willingly destroyed by his possession of it, and the other must both sanction and participate in that destruction.

'More disturbing even than Conrad in his depiction of the heart of darkness . . . it will be surprising if this year sees a more disturbing or haunting novel' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

'Relentless . . . an impressive and disturbing work of art' Robert Nye, Literary Review

'Edric describes a compelling plot in fine, spare prose' David Isaacson, Daily Telegraph
  • Published: 15 July 2001
  • ISBN: 9780552999250
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $26.99
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About the author

Robert Edric

Robert Edric was born in 1956. His novels include Winter Garden (James Tait Black Prize winner 1986), A New Ice Age (runner-up for the Guardian Fiction Prize 1986), The Book of the Heathen (winner of the WH Smith LIterary Award 2000), Peacetime (longlisted for the Booker Prize 2002), Gathering the Water (longlisted for the Booker Prize 2006) and In Zodiac Light (shortlisted for the Dublin Impac Prize 2010). His most recent novel is Sanctuary. He lives in Yorkshire.

Also by Robert Edric

Mercury Falling
Field Service
Sanctuary
The Monster's Lament
The Devil's Beat
The London Satyr
Salvage
See all

Praise for The Book Of The Heathen

'Relentless . . . an impressive and disturbing work of art'

Robert Nye, Literary Review

'Precise and compelling . . . maintains a relentless hold on the reader's interest . . . a fable about versions of truth and moral responsibility. It also belongs to a very British tradition: the mapping of non-Europe as a nightmare world in which the European psyche confronts its own dark madness'

Aamer Hussein, Independent

'Rendered in prose whose steadiness and transparency throw the dark turbulence of what is happening into damning relief'

Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times

'A very gripping story . . . the reader is drawn in inexorably to discover what horror lies at the heart of it . . . an apocalyptic fable for today'

John Spurling, The Times Literary Supplement

'Many respectable judges would put Edric in the top ten of British novelists currently at work . . . as a writer, he specialises in the delicate hint and the game not given away'

D.J. Taylor, Spectator

'It will be surprising if this year sees a more disturbing or haunting novel'

Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times

'Stunning . . . evocatively brings to life the stifling humidity and constant rainfall of the Congo'

John Cooper, The Times