“But later, at this Van Island Palm Oil Development Company, we learn a big thing. We learn that we are rubbish men. If I die then no one knows and no one worries. Our masters throw our bodies into the sea. They will forget Keramugl. And another thing, a big thing: we can no longer go back home. It costs too much money. We are truly in the Kalabus.”
ANNU is set in the South Pacific plantation industry of the 1970s and 80s. Historically, the plantation system epitomises the oppression of the dispossessed, the racism of colonialism and the exploitation of the weak by the strong. But Annu describes the human spirit triumphantly overcoming the plantation. It is about the ever-present possibility of changing the human karma for the better. Therefore, Annu is both a tragedy, and a comedy that takes its characters to their just deserts, to the hell or heaven of their own making.
My other ‘South Pacific’ novels present the plantation as a refuge for the most wretched of the dispossessed. Fairy tales beset with sexual adventure, misogyny, and the whole host of human crimes that make a good yarn!
ANNU is no less beset with vile human tendencies but it is more. It is a deliberate allegory of the industrialised human condition presenting the brutality of our age through the experience of the plantation. But importantly, the novel presents salvation as a real possibility for all concerned because the human tendency is as capable of being brave and compassionate as it is of being cowardly and vile. This is what my life has taught me. In buckets. The achievement of Annu, the myth, is indeed the realisation of a possible fairy tale.
An important part of Annu comes out of my South Pacific days. The murder of Nalin’s daughter, the stories of migrant workers. Also, a part comes out of The Philippines (Neki’s story) where I wrote much of the book. But I wrote more in Africa, where (for instance) I created Alloy. Those with whom I worked will recognise the African evolution of the myth.
Annu is a comprehensive revision of The Myth of Annu. Twenty-five thousand words stripped out for a start!
Available from Parker Street Publications as a pre-publishing copy (2022). Contact NICK ASHTON-JONES