'Things been bright last night,' Nice Gyal said to Reenee.
'Like you pick up something good?'
'Something good?' She skinned her eyes. 'Is seven trawler men I knock down'.
'Gracious.'
'Gracious,' Nice Gyal repeated. 'I had to piss in their vodka to make them lose their sense.'
'I hook up five Buck-man from the gold bush,' Sugar Plum joined in.
'You had to piss in their vodka too?' Reenee asked.
'No, I gave them Guinness with condensed milk and a raw egg in between.'

Ignoring their laughter, a quiet man sits brooding in a corner of the Belmonte Hotel, nursing his high wine. Intrigued, Reenee is determined to uncover his secret...

Beauty and squalor, sexual corruption and redemptive love coexist in tense equilibrium in this novel of injustice, revenge and expiation. In exploring how a cycle of hatred can be broken, Bissundyal takes the reader into the spectacular dereliction of the slums of Georgetown, the lively pleasures of village life on the island of Leguan on the Essequibo and into the peaceful intensity of the remote interior, writing with a poet's eye which startles and beguiles.

"An original and exciting new voice in Caribbean writing..."
David Dabydeen

Churaumanie Bissundyal was born in Guyana in 1950. He is heavily involved in theatre and is the author of several plays.