Novel
Timepiece
Janice Shinebourne · 1986
Synopsis
Sandra Yansen leaves the village of Pheasant, her family and her ties for a post as a reporter in Georgetown. She finds a capital torn by conflicts between communities and by growing encroachments on political freedoms, at a newspaper that is gradually becoming the organ of the ruling party. Between an affair with Son Young and the trade she is learning, she has to return to the village when her mother, Helen, falls ill, and there she finds again the circle of women who raised her.
Context
The first novel by its author, it appeared in 1986 from Peepal Tree Press, in Leeds, and received the Guyana Prize for Literature in 1987. It opens a series of novels drawn from her childhood on the Rose Hall plantation and from colonial and then independent Guyana. Fred D'Aguiar welcomed in it a past restored to posterity, and Ann Jordan a book that works on dependence and independence, political as much as personal. It has been reissued by its publisher under the name Jan Lowe Shinebourne.
Who it is for
A novel in English, not translated into French; it sheds light on the profession of journalist and on the place of women in the Guyanese press.
Prizes and reception
Awarded the Guyana Prize for Literature in 1987, and praised by Caribbean writers and critics.
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