author - "Philip Spires"
Two men preparing to address a political rally assess thier motives and their sincerity.
A Search For Donald Cottee is a novel about individualism. It’s also a parody of Don Quixote, reinterpreting the Don’s quest in contemporary terms and also using several of the scenes from Cervantes’s tome.
Donkey and his wife, Poncho Suzie, have retired to Benidorm on Spain´s Costa Blanca. Don has left behind his incessant self-education and Suzie has turned the corner of her illness. Their new life is parked on the salubrious La Manga campsite and from there they pursue their ambition of eternal holiday. To savour the developing experience, and to make its potential paradise available to all, they blog.
But they can never escape their origins, even as their new future unfolds, perhaps disintegrates into the present. Episodes from the past reappear, reincarnate themselves. Don’s environmental campaigning and Suzie’s quest for business success fill the time.
And then they discover that their friends, some old, some new, some related, others not, are transacting the businesses of their own lives. There is money in vice, more in property, even more in merely trading people.
In a world where competition is the norm, where a dog’s only possible diet is another dog, Don and Suzie are determined to do good works, to be honest and loyal to all, to support what is right. But then, in the final analysis, when the jigsaw of lives is broken apart, we see that perhaps the pieces never did fit. And so, still trying to do good, Donkey Cottee and Poncho Suzie leave us with an enigma. Or is it a riddle?
Mission is an African novel set in Kenya. Michael, a missionary priest in Kenya, has just killed Munyasya, a retired army officer. It might have been an accident, but Mulonzya, a politician resentful of the power of foreign churches, tries to exploit the tragedy for his own ends. Boniface, a young church worker, and his wife, Josephine, have just lost their child. They did not make it to the hospital in time, possibly because Michael made a detour to retrieve a letter from the Mission, a letter from Janet, a former volunteer teacher who was the priest's neighbour for two years. It is Munyasya who has the last laugh, however, when he reveals that he was probably in control of events all along. Thirty years on, the same characters find their lives still influenced by his memory.
Initiates is a short story set in Brunei. Sylvia and Ted have been invited to a wedding...
John Mwangangi is an idealist. He turns his back on a successful legal career in London to return to his home in Migwani, a small, poor town in eastern Kenya. His ambition is to assist his country's development, to create a model that others might emulate. But in trying to rediscover his roots and his very identity, old tensions resurface and new battles have to be fought. John gradually finds himself isolated by irreconcilable demands, excluded from his own culture, never fully admitted to the one he adopts. His father seeks proof of his son's integrity and insists that John's daughter be initiated into adulthood, an act that John's wife would never sanction. And when the tensions force the family apart, John finds solace in the company of Janet Rowlandson, a young British volunteer teacher, who becomes more than a friend. It becomes clear that someone will try to force the issue. A Fool's Knot is a sensitive portrait of a man's attempt to reclaim his cultural identity and, at the same time, stimulate change. The contradictions he must confront in his campaign against the grinding poverty of his people lead almost inevitably to conflict.
A couple on a short break away from work stay in a small Devon village in the west of England. The idyllic setting masks a reality that is less than perfect.
Two men preparing to address a political rally assess thier motives and their sincerity.
A Search For Donald Cottee is a novel about individualism. It’s also a parody of Don Quixote, reinterpreting the Don’s quest in contemporary terms and also using several of the scenes from Cervantes’s tome.
Donkey and his wife, Poncho Suzie, have retired to Benidorm on Spain´s Costa Blanca. Don has left behind his incessant self-education and Suzie has turned the corner of her illness. Their new life is parked on the salubrious La Manga campsite and from there they pursue their ambition of eternal holiday. To savour the developing experience, and to make its potential paradise available to all, they blog.
But they can never escape their origins, even as their new future unfolds, perhaps disintegrates into the present. Episodes from the past reappear, reincarnate themselves. Don’s environmental campaigning and Suzie’s quest for business success fill the time.
And then they discover that their friends, some old, some new, some related, others not, are transacting the businesses of their own lives. There is money in vice, more in property, even more in merely trading people.
In a world where competition is the norm, where a dog’s only possible diet is another dog, Don and Suzie are determined to do good works, to be honest and loyal to all, to support what is right. But then, in the final analysis, when the jigsaw of lives is broken apart, we see that perhaps the pieces never did fit. And so, still trying to do good, Donkey Cottee and Poncho Suzie leave us with an enigma. Or is it a riddle?
Mission is an African novel set in Kenya. Michael, a missionary priest in Kenya, has just killed Munyasya, a retired army officer. It might have been an accident, but Mulonzya, a politician resentful of the power of foreign churches, tries to exploit the tragedy for his own ends. Boniface, a young church worker, and his wife, Josephine, have just lost their child. They did not make it to the hospital in time, possibly because Michael made a detour to retrieve a letter from the Mission, a letter from Janet, a former volunteer teacher who was the priest's neighbour for two years. It is Munyasya who has the last laugh, however, when he reveals that he was probably in control of events all along. Thirty years on, the same characters find their lives still influenced by his memory.
Initiates is a short story set in Brunei. Sylvia and Ted have been invited to a wedding...
John Mwangangi is an idealist. He turns his back on a successful legal career in London to return to his home in Migwani, a small, poor town in eastern Kenya. His ambition is to assist his country's development, to create a model that others might emulate. But in trying to rediscover his roots and his very identity, old tensions resurface and new battles have to be fought. John gradually finds himself isolated by irreconcilable demands, excluded from his own culture, never fully admitted to the one he adopts. His father seeks proof of his son's integrity and insists that John's daughter be initiated into adulthood, an act that John's wife would never sanction. And when the tensions force the family apart, John finds solace in the company of Janet Rowlandson, a young British volunteer teacher, who becomes more than a friend. It becomes clear that someone will try to force the issue. A Fool's Knot is a sensitive portrait of a man's attempt to reclaim his cultural identity and, at the same time, stimulate change. The contradictions he must confront in his campaign against the grinding poverty of his people lead almost inevitably to conflict.
A couple on a short break away from work stay in a small Devon village in the west of England. The idyllic setting masks a reality that is less than perfect.