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Title: Gunbearer by Jan Merlin ISBN: 1-892183-11-0 Publisher: Author22 Publishing Pub. Date: May, 1999 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $22.50

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Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Gunbearer, a novel byJan Merlin
Comment: From the pen of Emmy award winning scriptwriter Jan Merlin comes a gripping adventure novel dealing with the quest for the source of the Nile as told from the point of view of "Bombay", the gunbearer. This is a carefully researched, densely plotted, richly characterized novel which is packed with incident and conceived and executed on a grand scale. It vividly brings Africa and its people to life. It would make a good film and is likely to appeal to those who like to be transported from their armchairs to another time and place.

Rating: 4
Summary: A somewhat flawed edition of a fine novel
Comment: A unique evocation of what it was like to safari in Africa in the mid-19th Century. The author's "voice" allows us to saturate ourselves in the colors, textures, odors, sounds, and sensations of a trek through wildest Africa. I've never read anything quite like this, in terms of transporting the reader far from the here and now, to a long-vanished world. The novel also tries to do justice to a long-forgotten historical figure, the explorer Speke, whose untimely death and rivalry with the much-more-famous Burton have conspired to cheat him of almost all credit for his incredible exploits. But the character you won't soon forget is the narrator, "Bombay," whose vocabulary and viewpoint are quite unique to English literature! Recommended!

The book is unattractively printed and bound, with many typos. The compelling nature of the text keeps these from being as distracting as they otherwise might be.

Rating: 5
Summary: Review by DR. WILLIAM RUSSO, CURRY COLLEGE, MILTON, MA
Comment: History is finally put right by this brilliant book. For decades bad movies and bad novels have depicted the native Africans who contributed to the opening up of the Dark Continent to Western explorers as cowardly buffoons. Now, in his remarkable novel, author Jan Merlin presents a picture of the quintessential safari gunbearer as a narrator with dignity, intelligence, and importance to the mission of finding the NileÕs source in the 1850s. For the first time in historical fiction, the black man of Africa is given his own voice from the tumultuous colonial expeditions of the nineteenth century. This is the true story, based on seldom consulted records, of the gunbearer whose single-handed heroism virtually created the British explorersÕ fame. The main feature of GUNBEARER is that it seems as if Out of Africa were told, not by Karin, but by her trusty black servant. The narrator is Mumbai, whose name and role is corrupted by his British bosses, into ÒBombay.Ó GUNBEARER is the picaresque account of a servant to the great explorer captains of British colonial Africa who sought, no matter what the cost in human suffering, the source of the Nile. The irony of the adventure is that the threesome is a weird triangle of deep emotional bonds. All other characters become pawns in the titanic emotional struggles of this threesome. Though this is an often-told story in literature and movies, Merlin now gives it a fresh re-telling. GUNBEARER is author Jan MerlinÕs magnum opus. He turns up his storytelling a notch or two its intensity, message, art, and power. Merlin has been able to combine epic majesty with an Isak Dinesen kind of ambiance, making the length and breadth of the tale instantly accessible and personal. The work is poetic. Segments and sections are dissertations on weather, atmosphere, rain, birds, odors, of the great African trek. The author frequently uses the metaphor of Wind, in a style of African tribal raconteurs. Bombay suggests an Innocent Eye narrator, but all three major characters seem innocent, in hindsight. Not one of them is creative or has a clue on how to solve his own problems. They trudge from one problem to another, seemingly not learning anything. This may be their tragic flaw. MerlinÕs literary power is at its acme in these situations. I picked up immediately on water images: especially the river being like a bathing woman, to mountains of snow, river fever metaphors. Merlin explains how the senses of the native Africans are valued as their "reason." The English seem out of touch, no pun intended, with this world perspective, subsequently are lost in the jungles of Africa. The listening exhortation is elemental in this African symphony, completely alien to the visitors or conquerers. An example of sense deprivation in the English is Òtime.Ó Time makes no sense, and time is apparently meaningless to the Africans . Sensing is also a talent of animals, birds, insects. The use of African words and names (from Hulluk to Hongo) is effective. It reminds me of Anthony Burgess in CLOCKWORK ORANGE. The poetry of the alien tongue is poetry and emblematic of the world it presents. The story is indeed about the inch by inch, mile by mile, corruption of a relationship over the course of a brutal safari. In epical terms there is an irony here, but this is one of the marvellous original qualities of the story. It certainly underscores the point that this is NOT a historical novel in any traditional sense. When Merlin describes the fable of the Source of the Nile. ItÕs a wonderful moment: it is emblematic and metaphoric, and seems to be the real hot-button of the story. GUNBEARER is most reminiscent of Robert Bolt's remarkable screenplay on David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. Jan Merlin manages to combine sweep and majesty with tiny detail. It is a hard match. Because many of the notebooks and collectibles of explorer Burton survive, and Speke's records are ruined, traditional western culture has only one-side of the expedition. For a century and more, the African contribution to these events has been ignored. MerlinÕs personal research in Africa alters that ethnocentric fault. It provides a real sense of Bombay as a cultural voice: providing us with a newer sharper focus to the historical events with which we are familiar, (inaccurately from the famous Spencer Tracy movie to the bad William Harrison novel a few decades ago). Merlin has used his own African researches to reveal the perspective of the native Africans who were the victims of the British explorers. Some chapters sing as much a song of Africa as any Isak Dinesen has told. The pages on Speke's ear infection are fascinating, disturbing, and compelling.. Those chapters feature a decisiveness in the plot and a small bout of contained action. There is a small struggle with wider implications. These moments indicate one is under the spell of a master storyteller. When the reader comes across the slight promotion for Bombay by his captains, one understands completely how evil the racism of the 19th century was and how blind even educated Britons were to it. Speke and Burton, insensitive meglomaniacs, were not worthy of Bombay's loyalty. One is an overt racist, and the other is also class-conscious in a cruel way. Speke strings Bombay along with some pretense of friendship, but he has taken advantage of his worker in a far more painful way. For Burton, the African is a mere tool, useful until he breaks down or can be replaced with a better model. GUNBEARER takes on more impact at the end when Speke's death could be attributed to a mishandled weapon--if it were not suicide. But, is it suicide? The novel grapples with this long-debated historical point, and its answer is more credible than other theories. For the reader this story is as much an epical journey....for its emotional, spiritual, and aesthetic impact. Intimate epics, when ingested, become part of the bloodstream. Putting it down or away is like putting some part of oneself away. To have suffered and travelled with the captains and their sad little companion creates the haunting effect you want to achieve. I shall always be haunted by the stillborn lives of these people. As a cautionary tale for our own lives, GUNBEARER presents us with a message that we may be powerless to adapt to the desperate and trivial vanities in our personal lives. It is the hardest lesson of all to learn. Jan Merlin has presented the story in the form of a masterpiece of literature.