The Last English Plantation by Janice Shinebourne

June has to confront her mixed Indian-Chinese background in a situation of heightened racial tensions, the loss of her former friends when she wins a scholarship to the local high school, the upheaval of the industrial struggle on the sugar estate where she lives, and the arrival of British troops as Guyana explodes into political turmoil.
 
Merle Collins writes: 'Jan Shinebourne captures the language of movement, mime, silences, glances, with a feeling that comes from being deep within the heart of the Guyanese community. In The Last English Plantation her achievement lies in having the voices of the New Dam villagers dominate the politically turbulent period of 1950s Guyana - A wonderful and stimulating voyage into the lives behind the headlines, into the past that continues creating the changing present. The voices of the New Dam villagers never leave you.' 
 
Wilson Harris writes: 'Jan Shinebourne's The Last English Plantation is set within a labyrinth of political chaos in British Guiana in the 1950s. But the novel is more subtly as well as obsessively oriented towards the psychological as well as the inner landscape of a colonial age.
 
A gallery of lives depicted in The Last English Plantation is drawn from diverse strata of cultural legacies and inheritance. The desolations, the comedy of adversity, the contrasting moods of individual and collective character give a ritual, however incongruous, substance to the fate of a dying Empire.'
 
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 182 
Weight: 231 g 
Dimensions: 210 x 163 x 15 mm 
Edition: New edition