Having lived ten years in Ghana I was curious to read this novel set just prior to Independence in 1957. It did not disappoint - though I am not Ghanaian and also experienced the country as a keen outsider. Laurence's interlinked protagonists - the Ghanaian Nathaniel and the unlikeable racist Johnnie - show the rifts between burgeoning modernity and deep-set tradition in the colonial country, including glimpses of forward-thinking on both sides. The wives of both protagonists are expecting their first children, the corrupt and whiney colonials are about to be ousted by a wave of 'Africanisation', and anguished Nathaniel must decide whether to reject the religion and conniving ways of his foreign masters, or return to the forest gods of his Drummer father - and a host of village practices he finds repellent and backward. Nathaniel's search for this path takes him to the edge of risk and loss, and Laurence capably - without extremism - negotiates the powerful forces at work.
