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y separately published work icon Visitants single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1979... 1979 Visitants
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Units Teaching this Work

Text Unit Name Institution Year
y separately published work icon Visitants Randolph Stow , London : Secker and Warburg , 1979 Z314711 1979 single work novel (taught in 1 units) Set in 1959 in the Trobriand Islands off the east coast of Papua, Visitants depicts a colonial outpost a few years away from independence, in which the white characters occupy a position of uneasy authority over the indigenous Islanders. The novel exposes the failures of communication between the two cultures, heightened by the inclusion of the well-documented sightings of four human figures in a disc-shaped craft in the sky above Boianai in June 1959. The narrative documents the psychic disintegration of another visitant, the white Patrol Officer Alistair Cawdor, who loses his ability to relate to other human beings, dreaming instead of contact with the star-people in the Boianai flying saucer. The parallel story of the islanders traces an adroit political coup against the ageing Paramount Chief, carried out under the cover of a cargo cult uprising.' Anthony J. Hassall 'Foreword ' (October 2002): x., Visitants (2003). World Literature: Words Without Borders University of New England 2016 (Semester 2)
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