The Wild Coast is a novel about how Guyanese might come to terms with
living in Guyana. Carew portrays a country in which the echoes of
slavery still disturb, with seemingly irreconcilable conflicts between
its diverse cultural inheritances, and which is struggling to feel at
home in a world where nature, away from the coastal strip and the city,
appears inhospitable and wild.
These are the challenges that confront Hector Bradshaw when, as a sickly
child, he is sent away to the remote village of Tarlogie. Here he
receives an education that he struggles to fit together: the dry
colonial education of the tragic Teacher La Rose; the moral precepts of
his kindly guardian, Sister Smart; the harsh African vision of the old
hunter Doorne; and the sexual education he receives from Elsa.
Above all, for a sickly city boy, there is the challenge of wild nature,
disturbingly red in tooth and claw.
Jan Carew was born in the village of Agricola in Berbice, Guyana in
1920.