The Half Man - Hardcover

Packer, George

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 039458192X ISBN 13: 9780394581927

Publisher: Random House, 1991

Covering the civil war on an island nation off the coast of Asia, ambitious journalist Daniel Levin abandons his visting American fiancee to interview the leader of the guerilla movement and becomes an unwitting player in the political events

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Young American journalist loses his humanistic illusions in a small, revolution-torn Third World country situated off the coast of Asia. Packer, whose The Village of Waiting (1988) told of his experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo, West Africa, shifts not only eastward but into fictional territory staked out by Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene: White Westerner confronted by an alien have-not world that he only half understands. Daniel Levin, reared in suburban Philadelphia, accepts an assignment to the island nation of Direv Sauran to find out the truth about its civil war and to test his mettle. His restiveness on the island is emphasized by an unsatisfactory visit from his stateside fianc‚e, who can't understand his obsession with the country. He leaves her in the capital city for an exclusive interview with the revolutionary leader, Fra Boboy, in his mountain fastness among a people whose name for a white is ``Ngot'' (Half Man), their forest bogeyman. Boboy's view is that the East/West ideological struggle is dead ``and history is born in bastard lands.'' Levin is accompanied on the trip by Ding, an educated, once well-to-do Sauranan photographer split between his native culture and Western trappings. Packer's descriptions of the country--its sights, sounds, and smells--are remarkably vivid, and the trip to the revolutionary redoubt is high adventure. But the major flaw in this otherwise gripping novel is the amount of space given to long ideological/philosophical debates, which have a stagy air and often descend into obscurity. Fra Boboy, whose doctoral dissertation was on Sacrifice, Impurity, State: Structures of Self and Violence in Modern Primitive Society, doesn't ring true as a man of action. And Levin's self-probing lacks real weight. Striking depiction of an impoverished Asian country caught up in a post-cold war revolutionary struggle--but excessive philosophizing chips away at credibility and readability. -- Copyright �1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal:

Packer ( The Village of Waiting , LJ 10/1/88) uses his first novel to chronicle a newspaperman's journey in a pale combination of The Ugly American and Heart of Darkness . Daniel Levin volunteers for assignment to Direv Saraun, an Asian island nation where a "popular" revolt is underway. Within four months his girlfriend Melanie joins him, and his articles attract the attention of Fra Boboy, a guerrilla leader camped in the southern mountains near a dormant volcano. Levin is invited to the camp for extensive interviews. Most of the novel deals with Levin's trip and activities in the camp after his arrival--a period of great self-examination. While Packer's novel is competently written and interesting to read, the unique spark needed for such familiar themes is missing. Not recommended.
- A.J. Wright, Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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