Drums of My Flesh

Winner of the Guyanna Prize, Fiction, 2006 Longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2007 Finalist for the Ottawa Book Awards, English Fiction, 2006

In a central park in Ottawa’s Sandy Hill, Gabe, an immigrant from Guyana (South America), explores the past in the company of his young Canadian-born daughter. But this novel goes beyond the traditional innocence to reality plot, as it also embraces a quest for spiritual beingness in a compelling setting fraught with irony. Grounds shift as characters come fully to life; tropical and temperate zones merge; the past and present form intermittent shadows. Gabe’s story of growing up in an Indian family struggling to live traditionally in faraway Guyana, and Christian, Hindu and Muslim worlds come together, as the plot unravels, and we continually move back and forth faced with new realities, new awakenings.