Based on a real historical figure and the actual journey he made from England to Trinidad with the motley crew of followers he recruits in Britain, Robert Antoni’s novel is a brilliant exploration of the persistence of dreams and the individual human stories that underlie Etzler’s quest. In particular, Antoni’s creation of Willy, one of the younger utopians, is a tragi-comic tour-de-force in revealing his contrary impulses—between young love for the sparky Marguerite, loyalty to his family as they discover the life-threatening realities of the tropical paradise, and his fascination with Trinidad and Etzler’s utopian dream.
Not least of the novel’s attractions is the richly comic account of its researching, in the titanic battles between the unscrupulous researcher and the librarian who will protect her photocopier, though not her virtue, with her life. How this prose epic of Trinidad’s history connects to the present is a matter for the reader to deduce – but connect it does, in many satirical ways.
'William’s account of young love attests to Antoni’s fluency in the poetry of nostalgia. In words as vibrant as the personalities he creates, Antoni deftly captures unconquered territories and the risks we’re willing to take exploring them.' – Publishers Weekly
“Robert Antoni doesn’t make giant steps. He makes quantum—and sometimes hilarious—leaps past whatever we call metafiction to the same territory as Richard Powers and David Foster Wallace. But like those men and unlike nearly everybody else, he never forgets that at the core of it all you’ve still got to tell a rip-roaring story.”
— Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings
Robert Antoni was born in the United States in 1958, and he carries three passports: US, Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas. He draws upon his two hundred years of family history in Trinidad and Tobago and his upbringing in the Bahamas.
Read 'As Flies to Whatless Boys: Memory and Archiving'.
