The Setting Sun: A Memoir of Empire and Family Secrets - Hardcover

Moore-Gilbert, Bart

3.57

35 ratings by Goodreads

9781781682685: The Setting Sun: A Memoir of Empire and Family Secrets

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1781682682 ISBN 13: 9781781682685

Publisher: Verso, 2014

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"I've always had difficulty imagining my father as a policeman. He seemed most himself in the informal setting of safari life, clothes disheveled, sometimes not shaving for days. So why did he join the Indian Police, with its rigid hierarchies and complex protocols?"

Setting Sun is the story of the dying days of an empire, combined with gripping family history, in an extraordinary literary voyage across India.

When a letter from an Indian historian arrives out of the blue, informing leading academic Moore Gilbert that his beloved, deceased father, a member of the Indian Police before Independence, partook in the abuse of civilians, Moore Gilbert's world is shaken as his cherished childhood memories are challenged. He sets out in search of the truth—discovering much about the end of empire, the state of India today, and whether his father, as one of the many characters on his quest claims, really was a terrorist.

Crisscrossing western India, and following leads from bustling Mumbai to remote rural scenes, Moore-Gilbert finally pieces together the truth, ultimately discovering that the same story links the past with the present, colonial India with its modern incarnation, terrorism through the ages and father with son.

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About the Author:

Bart Moore-Gilbert was born in Tanzania and studied in Britain. He is currently a Professor of Postcolonial studies at Goldsmith's College, London, and the author of, among others, Postcolonial Theory and Hanif Kureishi.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* One day, London University English professor Moore-Gilbert is in his office, reading an e-mail asking about a person who might be related to him. In just months, Moore-Gilbert is in India, tracing the past of his father, Bill, a game warden in Africa who died young in a plane crash, a man Moore-Gilbert barely knew but clearly remembers. Once in India, Moore-Gilbert finds clues in tattered reports and interviews with elderly acquaintances of his father that begin to bring to life a person very different from the one he remembers. Born in Tanzania, Moore-Gilbert had an unusual childhood, and his youthful memories are scattered throughout the book, as are almost show-stopping photographs of Moore-Gilbert with Kimwaga, his beloved “minder,” who is holding a hyena cub, and of Bill, his father, wearing a pith helmet and standing just behind a massive, freshly dead tiger. Moore-Gilbert bravely moves forward with his search in India, though what he finds shakes him. Was his father, in India from 1938 to 1947 and a member of the Indian police, a terrorist? Was he a womanizer? Moore-Gilbert, who feels he is becoming a detective like his father once was, states, “I made the decision to find out the truth, however painful or inconvenient it might be.” Touching and evocative and depicting India’s turbulent past and present, this is an enthralling son-and-father memoir. --Eloise Kinney

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