The Sly Company of People Who Care, Rahul Bhattacharya

A twenty-six-year-old Indian journalist decides to give up his job and travel to a country where he can 'escape the deadness of his life'. So he arrives in Guyana, a forgotten colonial society of raw, mesmerising beauty. From the beautiful, decaying wooden houses of Georgetown, through coastal sugarcane plantations, to the dark rainforest interior scavenged by diamond-hunters, he is absorbed by the fantastic possibilities of this place where the descendants of the enslaved and the indentured have made a new world. But he is not just seduced by the country: he is also captivated by the feisty yet fragile Jan, and together they embark on an adventure which will take them into a new country and change both their lives. In his dazzling and ambitious debut novel, Rahul Bhattacharya has created a story that follows the shape and rhythms of life, not art. Part picaresque, in part a meditation, "The Sly Company of People Who Care" captures the heady adventures of travel, the overheated restles