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The
2005 Award
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White Lies by Dexter Petley
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Nominated by:
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| the complete A-Z listing of nominated authors |
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ABOUT
THE BOOK
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| Does
anyone believe in love at first sight? Norman didn't until he read about
'Joy, The Gold Panning Missionary' in an African magazine and set out to
find her. But it isn't easy to find love in east Africa in the early eighties.
This is a region with a heavy colonial hangover: Obote's government teeters
on the brink of collapse, petty crime and corruption are rife in the streets
and Norman, the impressionable young Englishman, makes slow progress towards
the woman he intends to marry. A decade on and many thousands of miles from Africa, Norman is trying to shape a new life. Joy has walked out of their tumbledown farmhouse in a rural corner of northern France leaving Norman to sift the wreckage of their marriage. But it is only when Norman decides to go back to Africa - not for love this time, but to settle old scores - that he finally sees what he must do, however dark and terrifying an act that is. White Lies carefully laces Norman's African and French stories together to create a delicate portrait of an Englishman abroad, a brutal depiction of the corruption that colonialism breeds and, above all, a brilliant, bittersweet love story. |
| ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
| Dexter Petley lives in a caravan in the Burgundy mountains in France, writing, fishiing and gardening. He has published two previous novels, Little Nineveh and Joyride. He is also a regular contributor to Waterlog, The Magazine for the Absolute Angler. |
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