The Parade
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of The Circle and The Monk of Mokha comes a taut, suspenseful story of two foreigners' role in a nation's fragile peace.
'Tightly written, carefully designed to wrong-foot preconceptions, and astute . . . An intensely gripping story' Evening Standard
An unnamed country is leaving the darkness of a decade at war, and to commemorate the armistice the government commissions a new road connecting two halves of the state.
Two men, foreign contractors from the same company, are sent to finish the highway. While one is flighty and adventurous, wanting to experience the nightlife and people, the other wants only to do the work and go home. But both men must eventually face the absurdities of their positions, and the dire consequences of their presence.
With echoes of J. M. Coetzee and Graham Greene, this timeless novel questions whether we can ever understand another nation's war, and what role we have in forging anyone's peace.
'Certainly his best book since What is the What, The Parade may well be the sound of a major writer finding his mature voice' Spectator
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Eggers's unremarkable latest (after The Monk of Mokha) follows two unnamed men sent to an unnamed country by an unnamed corporation to pave a road. The country tropical, malarial is emerging from years of civil war, and a new road running through the heart of the country is intended to be a first step by the government to unite the populace. The men charged with paving it are code-named Four and Nine. Four is a stoic company man intent on getting the job done ahead of schedule and with as little fuss as possible. Nine exists seemingly only to annoy Four; he talks incessantly, has no problem breaking company protocol particularly when it comes to interacting with locals, which the company prohibits but he engages in endlessly and does pretty much anything other than his job, including playing in a potentially contaminated river. As Four gets to work, Nine becomes increasingly irresponsible, and after his antics predictably get him ill and in trouble with the locals, both men end up in a precarious, possibly grave, situation. The repetitive narrative, sparse prose, and overall vagueness lend this an allegorical feel, and because the reader spends the whole book waiting for the hammer to drop, when it finally does (on the last page), it lands with more a thud than a wallop. There's nothing particularly bad about this, but it comes across as more an exercise than a full-blooded novel.
