Bivouac, Kwame Dawes
Bivouac, Kwame Dawes
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
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Bivouac

Author: Kwame Dawes

Narrator: Beresford Bennett

Unabridged: 6 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/02/2019


Synopsis

When Ferron Morgan's father dies in suspicious circumstances, his trauma is exacerbated by the conflict within his family and among his father's friends over whether the death was the result of medical negligence or if it was a political assassination. Ferron grew up in awe of his father's radical political endeavors, but in later years he watched as the resurgence of the political right in the Caribbean in the 1980s robbed the man of his faith.

Ferron's response to the death is further complicated by guilt, particularly over his failure to protect his fiancée from a brutal assault. He begins to investigate the direction of his life with great intensity, in particular his instinct to keep moving on and running from trouble.

This is a sharply focused portrayal of Jamaica at a tipping point in its recent past, in which the private grief and trauma condenses a whole society's scarcely understood sense of temporariness and dislocation.

About Kwame Dawes

Kwame Dawes's debut novel She's Gone was the winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (Debut Fiction). He is the author of twenty-one books of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His awards include the Forward Poetry Prize, the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, the Musgrave Silver Medal, several Pushcart Prizes, the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, and an Emmy Award. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and is Chancellor Professor of English at the University of Nebraska. Dawes serves as the associate poetry editor for Peepal Tree Press and is director of the African Poetry Book Fund. He is series editor of the African Poetry Book series and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. Dawes is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 2018 was elected as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Tonstant on March 18, 2019

Bivouac begins with Ferron Morgan driving his father’s body in the back seat of a car to funeral home, his stomach is upset by anxiety, some of it due to grief and some to a strange white Toyota following him. The narrative of the story continues to follow Ferron for some time, while he haphazardly......more