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Title: A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone ISBN: 0-679-73762-6 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 10 March, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.73 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Power, [evil] and self interest.
Comment: In its setting and background a Flag for Sunrise rests firmly in Graham Greene and Ernest Hemmingway territory - a fictional Central American country run by a right wing military regime. The cast of characters holds few suprises - the whisky priest, the idealistic nun, the american abroad, the sadistic secret policeman, various members of the world intelligence services.
What struck me about a Flag for Sunrise was its uncomprimisingly dark view of the world and the politics that makes it function. A world where all that is important is power and strength and your ability to harness these forces for your own self interest. A world where morals have no place, in fact a place where morals will get you killed, often slowly and painfully.
Yet somehow the book remains rivetting. You know that it is going to end badly for those characters that you like, at times it is difficult to turn the page, but you do anyhow and what happens is often worse than your darkest imaginings. But it is also honest.
This is the second Robert Stone novel that I have read and I am certain that it will not be the last.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Third World Apocalypse...
Comment: The incendiary hint of Revolution simmers on the surface of a South American country beset by poverty and the all-consuming appetite of corporate gluttony. The rolling green hills and sparkling beaches of Tecan are perfect for exploitation. The land is already littered with an assortment of "investors" jockeying for inside information. Revolution spells opportunity, out with the old regime, in with the new, and a tidy profit to be made along the way. The only question is whether to "run with the Rabbit or hunt with the Hare?"
Saints and sinners compete in this Third World nightmare, each with a different agenda. It's an ideological train wreck and the ultimate victims are the disenfranchised. The name of the game is greed and the players are the usual: privately owned corporations, interested governments, a militia trained to fight insurrection, various criminals, religious zealots and a panoply of hired spies and assorted operatives. Our personal guide is Frank Holliwell, an American anthropologist with "Company" ties from his days in Vietnam, visiting the region ostensibly to give a lecture. Holliwell becomes one more pawn in a dangerous game with incredibly high stakes.
In the final act, no one is who he seems in this Darwinian struggle for dominance. The common people are disposable, the cause is mutable and the quality of civilization a casualty of events. Enter at your own risk, this is Robert Stone at his best. But know this: you step into chaos in this novel (with no separate chapters) that jolts from one state of anxiety to another, watching over your shoulder at every turn.
Rating: 3
Summary: Stone's Best Novel
Comment: Since all the previous 5-star reviews have been by written by
Bob Stone groupies, a 'reality check review' is in order here.
Stone likes to write about chaotic places in chaotic times
(Vietnam and San Fran in the early 70s, Jerusalem in the 90s).
Such places attract all kinds of strange and unhappy people,
including flaky hippies, cynical hustlers and stone psychos.
They also create no small number of monomaniacal fanatics.
The problem with Stone's novels is that these are the only
characters who appear in them! Perhaps an exception should
be made for the 'well-meaning but ineffectual intellectual'
character that plays a major part in every one of Stone's books.
I am not sure whether to count this 'Uberangstmensch' as an
actual character-type, however, since I suspect it is merely
a fictionalized version of Stone himself!
'A Flag for Sunrise' is a bit different than Stone's other
novels, and quite a bit better (I would give it 3.5 stars if
I could (-:). Stone did a great deal of research for this book,
and it shows-check out his fascinating comments in his
interview,included in *The Paris Review: Writers at Work* series.
Unlike Vietnam, the American West Coast or Israel, Central
America has not been written about much (or well) in fiction.
This book truly captures the feel of the region, though
thankfully things have improved since Stone was writing.
However, Colombia has been looking rather scary lately and may
be for our time what Central America was for the 80s.
Despite its proliferation of unpleasant characters (half-way
through any Stone book you start to wonder whether any happy
and well-adjusted people exist in his imagination), lapses
into hippie mysticism and repetitiveness, *A Flag for Sunrise*
remains a very good book. It is better than just about any
novel published nowadays, but it is certainly not on a level
with Joseph Conrad or Graham Greene-two of the greatest novelists
of the 20th Century!-despite what any Robert Stone groupie might tell you.
Still, Stone is well worth reading; and this is his best book.
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Title: Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone ISBN: 0395860253 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: 02 April, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: A Hall of Mirrors by Robert Stone ISBN: 0395860288 Publisher: Mariner Books Pub. Date: April, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Outerbridge Reach by Robert Stone ISBN: 0395938945 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 15 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Children of Light by Robert Stone ISBN: 0679735933 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 10 March, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Bay of Souls : A Novel by Robert Stone ISBN: 0395963494 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 22 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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