Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

... both his sentences and the structure of his novels work like the waves of the Atlantic that so often divide his characters from those they love, lapping at the shore, retreating, returning, shaping things in their path.... The real subject here is the physical Guyana — its singular confusion of races and languages, its groves of tamarind, sapodilla and greenheart, its bats, alligators and iguanas, betrayed by a border war fought in a jungle where no one pays attention to borders anyway.

— From Aida Edemariam's review of Fred D'Aguiar's new novel, Bethany Bettany, published in yesterday's U.K. Guardian. (Read an extract from the novel here.)