King Of Rumah Nadai - Hardcover

Clarke, Terence

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1562790609 ISBN 13: 9781562790608

Publisher: Mercury House, 1994

Synopsis

Dan Collins, chief of the Agency for International Development in western Borneo, is a man caught in conflict between two cultures. On orders to retrieve a State Department employee from the upper reaches of the Baleh River, he discovers an enthralling world cloaked by the lush veil of the jungle. Instead of bringing his colleague back, he retreats into the uncharted wilderness.
There Collins finds the longhouse of Nadai. Peopled by native Ibans, Rumah Nadai soon becomes his home, and he forges a kinship with Bawang, the tribal headman, and Chiang, a Chinese man living among the Ibans. He learns the Iban ways and how to live in union with a nature that is both life-giving and life-threatening.
Looming large in his consciousness however, are the responsibilities he has left behind. In a terrifying confrontation in the jungle night - as loggers threaten the jungle forests - Collins must choose between loyalty to the Ibans and the values of his native culture. In The King of Rumah Nadai, Clarke paints a rich portrait of one man's struggle with clashing cultures and deep inner conflict on the path to self-knowledge.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Clarke's third novel (after My Father in the Night, 1991) recounts the experience of Dan Collins, an adventure-seeking State Department development officer stationed in Borneo in the 1960s. A loyal officer for several years, Collins has overlooked the boredom and irritations stemming from a turgid bureaucracy and the department's sometimes patronizing attitudes toward non-Westerners. But he protests when an agent who has ``gone native'' is fired. This costs Collins his own job but allows him for the first time to really understand the indigenous Iban tribe, with whom he goes to live. Freed from the restraints of official position, he integrates into the Iban culture, learning to fish, hunt, and cock-fight, taking part in ceremonies, and eventually becoming a member of the tribe. Unfortunately, Clarke doesn't delve deeply enough into this assimilation. Although he shows Collins's ambitions changing as he becomes part Iban, the feelings and thoughts that drive this process remain a mystery to the reader. A major identity crisis, for example, is sketchily resolved in a mere 20 pages. As a cultural critique, the novel also fails, largely because Clarke caricatures both his American and his Iban characters. The State Department officials are Eurocentric bureaucrats who call the Ibans ``goddammed savages'' and ``insist on everything being in writing, approved by higher-ups, and properly signed-off on.'' In contrast, the Ibans are portrayed as noble primitives altruistic and tolerant, who teach Collins ``everything they know'' and let him be true to some of his American values, even when he contradicts some of their most cherished beliefs. A lightweight effort, often provocative and entertaining enough, that ultimately suffers from inconsistencies and holes in characterization. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

The richly multicultural world of Malaysia in the 1960s is the setting for this evocative novel by Clarke ( My Father in the Night ), himself a resident of Borneo for many years. Dan Collins is a high-ranking U.S. State Department official based in Sarawak, the central province of the newly created country. When Eddie Gould, a State Department worker, "goes native" and shows up on the cover of National Geographic in tattoos and a loincloth, Collins is held responsible. Disturbed by a threat to recall him to Washington, Collins decides to search out Eddie himself. He travels upriver to the primitive village of Rumah Nadai, armed with only one piece of advice: "Watch out for the darkness." There, with the help of the local tribe's headman, Bawang, Collins himself transforms almost completely into one of the native Ibans, using a blowgun, raising a fighting cock and traveling alone in the terrifyingly dark rain forest. The novel is at its best when weaving together different cultures--Malay, Chinese, Iban, British--that struggle to form the emerging Malaysian nation. But the background and motivation behind Collins's flight into the jungle remains unclear, and a melodramatic ending involving encroaching loggers provides no additional information. This remains an appealingly written novel in which much is carefully observed, save for the main character himself.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mercury House
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1562790609
• ISBN 13: 9781562790608
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192