The Raw Man

(Paperback)

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Description

A remarkable debut novel set in Southern Africa, where a man struggles to unravel his family's secrets and come to grips with his own ancestry, and his troubled past. It begins with a journey. In a resurrected bungalow on the edge of the fledgling nation of Zimbabwe, Sergeant Gordon's story has come to rest. He has borne it across drought-blasted floodplains and highlands, fleeing the copper mine which was his prison for many years. We learn his extraordinary story in reverse, from the military, to adolescent rebellion, a patchwork education and the brutal initiations of youth; back to childhood, birth and beyond. We travel the scarred landscapes of Southern Africa- a fractured region contending with its own history and a terrible present reality just as Gordon must do the same; uncovering the secrets of his own ancestry.The Raw Man is a unique and powerful novel, a mixing of reality and myth and histories real and imagined. It is a story which has never before been told, a conjuring of an extraordinary place and time which reverberates beyond the pages. The Raw Man is a revelatory work of fiction, and one that is impossible to forget.

Reviews

Once the reader has gone past the first chapter - no, first page - his chances of putting down the book are small -- Helon Habila * Guardian *
The Raw Man is an extraordinary novel, and a work of rare conception, bringing together, within one individual, the painfully conflicted history of southern Africa -- Brian Chikwava
A fantastically imaginative and enjoyable book * Think Africa Press *
Unapologetically ambitious and suffused with a rare emotional intensity * BookTrust *
Clarks novel is rich and strange It is difficult not to admire its scope and verve, and not to be keen to know what its author does next * Times Literary Supplement *

Author Bio

George Makana Clark was raised in Rhodesia. He currently lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with his wife and daughter.