Visitants

The setting of Randolph Stow's stunning new novel is Papua in 1969. On a remote island strange disturbances have occurred: the inhabitants have taken to destroying their villages and crops, there have been disappearances and murders, a cargo cult is celebrated. There is talk of UFOs and visitors from stars. The culmination has been the hideous suicide of a Patrol Officer, sent to the island to conduct a census. An enquiry is now being held, and it is the narrations of the five chief witnesses, two white and three black, of which the novel is composed.

As the statements of the witnesses interweave, a powerful picture emerges of the confrontation between two very different cultures, and the victor is not necessarily that which considers itself the more advanced. Mysterious, allusive and haunting, Visitants is a triumph.