Kalimantaan

by C . S . Godshalk (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $3.40

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $3.40

  A young Englishman founded a private raj on the coast of Borneo. The world that resulted, boasting stone quays, elegant gardens, churches, and musical levees, eventually encompassed a territory the size of England, its expansion campaigns paid for in human heads. In this world, a version of Victorian colonial society impacted with one of the most violent cultures on earth. The results were often startling -- pockets of tenderness and extreme brutality appearing in odd corners. A small tribe of fugitives, adventurers, criminals, and saints -- the madly talented and the simply mad - peopled this world. This is their story. The deeper story resides in the realm of the heart. It is about love in absurd conditions, the tenacity of it as well as our ability to miss it repeatedly and with perverse genius.

• New

  Paperback
  1999

  $29.02

  KALIMANTAAN - the old name for Borneo - is an epic novel about the founding of a small empire by an extraordinary man and a handful of his followers. It is also a beautifully written story about love surviving in the most hostile of circumstances. It is 1850 and a young Englishman, Gideon Barr, arrives in Borneo; within 10 years he has conquered an area the size of England and Wales, ruling through armies of tribal head-hunters. This is the story of Victorian social values superimposed on one of the most violent cultures on earth, of tenderness amid extreme brutality, and of a remarkable tribe of fugitives, missionaries, and romantics drawn to this remote outpost of the world. But the personal cost to Barr is enormous - he and his lovely wife, Amelia, lose three children to cholera and finally she has to return home to ensure the safety of their last surviving child. Full of fantastic descriptions of life in exotic conditions, this is a rare novel that immerses the reader in another, more wonderful world.