Black Midas

By Jan Carew

Astonishingly vivid, bawdy, and tempestuous, this classic novel, first published in 1958, is a cautionary epic of greed and class conflict in colonial Guyana. Comparing ruthless 20th century prospectors to the Spanish conquistadors who raped a continent in their quest for El Dorado, the novel follows the dreams and delusions of Aron Smart, a youth orphaned early in life and brought up on a farm by his grandparents who impressed upon him the value of an education. When Aron's schooling is cut short after a reversal of fortune, he decides to follow in his father's footsteps as a diamond prospector. He is immensely successful and becomes the legendary 'Shark', in a wild, untamed world of drinkers, get-rich-quick and lose-it-quick prospectors and the whores who haunt the diamond fields. He is determined to use his new wealth to buy his way into the Anglicised middle class, but here he is out of his element in the world of property and prestige, and, cheated of his fortune, he returns to the interior, to resume mining with a reckless madness, but the beginnings of insight.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1845230957
• ISBN13: 9781845230951
• Release Date: May 2009
• Publisher: Peepal Tree Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 8.0"