Author(s): Kyo Maclear

General Fiction

Marcel is ethnically ambiguous. Born of an affair and abandoned in infancy by his mother, he is a brown-skinned child struggling to find a way to belong in racially charged London. When his white surrogate father, Oliver, becomes a foreign correspondent reporting on the war in Vietnam, Marcel is left in the care of his father's ill-equipped friend, Pippa, setting him adrift in swinging London. Eventually Marcel is sent to join Oliver in Saigon. When the fragile balance is broken and the war escalates, Oliver is finally overwhelmed by emotions he can't outrun. And when Marcel uncovers the truth about his mother, his world is overturned. In this profound novel of betrayal and resurrection, Kyo Maclear blends cultures and classes with wry humour, and casts an astute eye on the reluctant yielding of old ways to a new internationalism.