They create humour, whereas the lies of the politician are cynical and lack metaphorical colour.The novel’s theme, of art versus power, is made explicit in the character of Surinam, a painter who will not exhibit for tourists and whose refusal to sell himself contrasts with the politician’s norm. His characters are variously trapped and muted in systems of greed, but each continues to struggle towards self-expression. The hero, Kwaku, is a fake herbalist healer and small-time hustler, but his garrulity and incessant story-telling mark him out as a folk artist He is a wonderful liar, but his lies are life-giving. His acknowledged talent, in novels like The Murderer, is the exposure of passions that can climax in a terrifying disintegration of morality His new novel is no different.

It reveals the nature of Guyana’s decay between 1966 and 1992, a period when the Americans, hysterically fearful of communism, established and financed a fascistic regime. Political patronage, sexual thuggery, kleptomania and killings bankrupt the society, both morally and economically. Various forms of migration offer the only escape from the net of deceit and intrigue. That Heath is able to name actual characters as murderers and victims testifies to the continuing role of the writer as political witness and archivist. It is also an acknowledgement of the spirit of openness in Guyana today.

The post-Cold War period has seen a blooming of literature in Guyana that seeks not only to name the evils of the past but also to signpost the future.
Heath’s hopefulness lies in the redemptive possibilities of art. Patchily accomplished, but always readable, Kowloon Tong hovers between realism and satire If it is realism, the characters are too gross If it is satire, the story is too small. The problem – not perhaps such a big one – is a problem of scale.. Roy Heath’s fiction is wholly based in Guyana and explores family tensions mired in the country’s social and political upheavals. Long after the book is finished, the taste of Hong Kong – the gritty air and bus fumes, the stewed steam of the mottled sea-water sloshing against the pier, the foul dust from the land reclamation – is vivid in the reader’s mouth. And when was the last time a doughty matron reached for her “gamp” when the weather turned nasty?Unsurprisingly, some of the best passages of Kowloon Tong are Theroux’s evocation of atmosphere. Nuances of speech are lovingly observed, but occasionally jar.

The racism and vulgarity of the expats are surely best left unembellished. He made deft throttling and knotting gestures with his fingers, ‘Truss it well and hang it for days Let it air dry. Just dangle there.’” The rest of the time, however, Hung is your standard inscrutable, straight from the files of Charlie Chan.Similarly, Betty Mullard with her slipping dentures and racist remarks is a grand guignol horror, a cross between Maggie Thatcher and Giles’s Grandma. Mr Hung is given one brilliantly paced scene explaining the esoteric pleasures of Chinese cuisine: “‘This is delicious because it has been strung up’ he said ‘You know how? Some string – tie it’.

You refused to remember it, and when you tried again the failure was repeated.”Such attentive articulation of complex emotion marks Theroux as a writer at the height of his powers, and makes the reader all the more impatient with the slapdash characterisation in the bulk of the novel. They were always out of focus, and the nearer you got to them the harder they were to see.” By the time Bunt adjusts his focus to the new reality, the game is up.An habitue of Kowloon’s “blue bars”, Bunt fails to find relief in sex. “Sex was a balancing act that always ended in failure, a fall, a sense of having slipped and been inattentive; of not knowing how to explain it. Bunt and his mother, Betty, are approached by the sinister Mr Hung, a representative of the Chinese army who wants to buy the auspiciously sited Imperial Stitching building. Bunt at first refuses to take the “Chinky-Chonk” seriously, but it becomes clear that Mr Hung’s “offer” is more in the nature of a requisition.
Blustering and bewildered, Bunt serves as a kind of expat everyman: “When had the subject peoples of the British empire ever been anything but riddles? The Chinese were a supreme and slitty example of that. His latest novel, Kowloon Tong, can at times resemble a piece of Baroque statuary, so heavily encrusted with allegory that the subject seems to droop under the weight. Theroux has rejected a panoramic vision of Hong Kong in its last days of empire for a straightforward domestic narrative.