Borderlines
By: Michela Wrong
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 2015
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 342
ISBN-13: 9780008147402; 9780008122980; 9780008123017
Subjects: Social conditions; Women lawyers; Fiction
Description: The debut novel by a British writer with nearly two decades of African experience - a compelling courtroom drama and a gritty, aromatic evocation of place, inspired by recent events. British lawyer Paula Shackleton is mourning a lost love when a small man in a lemon-coloured suit accosts her over breakfast in a Boston hotel. Winston Peabody represents the African state of North Darrar, embroiled in a border arbitration case with its giant neighbour. He needs help with the hearings in The Hague, Paula needs to forget the past. She flies to the state's capital determined to lose herself in work, but soon discovers that even jobs taken with the purest intentions can involve moral compromise. Taking testimony in scorching refugee camps, delving into the colonial past, she becomes increasingly uneasy about her role. Budding friendships with a scarred former rebel and an idealistic young doctor whittle away at her pose of sardonic indifference, until Paula finds herself taking a step no decent lawyer should ever contemplate. Michela Wrong has been writing about Africa for two decades. In this taut legal thriller, rich with the Horn of Africa's colours and aromas, she probes the motives underlying Western engagement with the continent, questioning the value of universal justice and exploring how history itself is forged. Above all her first novel is the story of a young woman's anguished quest for redemption.
Table of contents: title: Hardback -The debut novel by a British writer with nearly two decades of African experience; title: a compelling courtroom drama and a gritty, aromatic evocation of place, inspired by recent events. Bereaved British lawyer Paula Shackleton has good reason to pine for obscurity. So when US law professor Stanton Peabody III unexpectedly offers her a job in the Red Sea capital of Lira, she accepts. Her boss, an eccentric African-American expert on international law with several ideological axes to grind, represents a Horn of Africa government at war with its neighbour over a poorly defined colonial border. Shuttling between the sun-dazed mountain-top city of Lira and the Peace Palace in The Hague, the two lawyers argue their case before a panel of western judges. But even as Paula learns the tricks of Stanton's unusual trade, the friendships she forges in Lira with locals lead her to question the morality of working for an African government whose treatment of its own citizens becomes ever more brutal.