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The Wizard Swami
When Devan, the awkward boy from Providence Village, finds his vocation as a teacher of Hinduism to the rural Indians of the Corentyne Coast of Guyana, his life and his troubles begin. In this richly comic novel, Cyril Dabydeen creates a vibrant picture of the Guyanese Hindu community struggling for a place in what is for Devan a confusingly multi-racial country.
Price
£7.99
Author(s)
Cyril Dabydeen
ISBN number
9780948833199
Pages
136
Price
£7.99
Classification
Fiction, Novel
Country setting
Guyana
Publication date
01 Nov 1988
When Devan leaves his village and his wife and children behind, he finds urban, cosmopolitan Georgetown, with its wealthy and politically cynical Indian elite, an experience frequently at odds with the ardent simplicities of his teaching. In the tragi-comic absurdities of Devan's career, Dabydeen reveals powerfully the dangers to a religion's truths when it is made to serve the needs of ethnic assertion. But in becoming the Wizard Swami in charge of Mr Bhairam's prize racehorse Destiny, Devan not only reaches his lowest point, but also begins to discover truths of a much more tentative but enlightening kind. The Wizard Swami is a finely observed comedy of manners, but it is much more than that in its imaginative and poetic play with the symbols of Hinduism in a secular and cosmopolitan society.
Variations
Cyril Dabydeen
Cyril Dabydeen teaches Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa, and is a former Poet Laureate of Ottawa (1984-87). His work has appeared in over 60 literary magazines and anthologies world-wide. He has done more than 300 readings internationally and has twice adjudicated for the Governor General's Award (Poetry) and the USA Neustadt International Prize for Literature (UOklahoma) in 2000.