A hauntingly powerful novel about how the choices we make can stay with us forever, by the award-winning author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and 84K.
South Africa in the 1880s. A young and naive English doctor by the name of William Abbey witnesses the lynching of a local boy by the white colonists. As the child dies, his mother curses William.
William begins to understand what the curse means when the shadow of the dead boy starts following him across the world. It never stops, never rests. It can cross oceans and mountains. And if it catches him, the person he loves most in the world will die.
Gripping, moving, and utterly thought-provoking, this novel proves once again that Claire North is one of the most innovative voices in modern fiction.
It has taken us nearly thirty years to conquer the world, and when there was nothing left to take, it sounded a starting gun whose shot echoed from Verdun to the Somme. That is the truth of it.
THE PURSUIT OF WILLIAM ABBEY is the story of a Great War Doctor who, over the course of two evenings in a trench hospital just behind the lines, relates a strange tale to a nurse. As Abbey talks to Sister Ellis we hear the fantastic story of his cursing by the mother of a boy whose lynching he witnessed without intervening. William did not take part but he stood by. Since then he has been pursued by the shade of the boy, Langa. When Langa gets close Abbey can read the true thoughts of those around him, indeed is compelled to utter these truths aloud; should Langa catch up, Abbey’s loved ones will die.
What follows is a thrilling adventure story as Abbey travels the world always trying to keep ahead of the boy. He encounters others with the curse, is discovered by, and tries to escape from, a shady British intelligence agency who want to harness his ‘gift’, and tries not to fall in love... Claire North is an incredibly talented and versatile author; one pulse-racing and cinematic chase through New York in particular is the match of any of the masters. The rhythm, the pacing of the novel as a whole is astounding. But this is so much more than a thriller.
The logic of it was inescapable. Even if France had little interest in the mud mosques of Djenné, it had to plant its flag in Mali before the Belgians could. Though the British were hardly concerned with Sudan, they needed to stake a claim before the Germans, to protect Egypt. What was Morocco, save a territory at threat from the Italians? What were Madagascar, Nigeria, Guinea; Portuguese East Africa, Libya, Eritrea — why, they were all countries that another Great Power might claim if you didn't claim them first. Peace in Europe hung by a thread, no power ready to move against its neighbour for fear of losing the fight, Conquest, the butchery of the world beyond Europe's mountains, kept the peace — at least for a little while.
North has written a scathing indictment of colonialism and empire, of the ‘great men’ for whom common men are resources, ‘just another Tommy’ to be used up, other races animals to be rounded up or exterminated. As one character says,
“We found truth-speakers, yes. Primitive peoples in the deserts of Australia, or the jungles of central Africa. People who barely understood elementary concepts, and could not cooperate fully with our aims.”
THE PURSUIT OF WILLIAM ABBEY is a masterpiece. The novel defies genre, at times a spy thriller, an adventure story, a horror story, and as the narrator is essentially Sister Ellis, who relates Abbey’s words as he in turn tells others’ truths, the suspicion that we are listening to one or more unreliable narrators only makes the real truth of colonialism and warfare all the more effective. Intricately plotted, breathless, exhausting and heartbreaking.
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