RIVER OF THE SUN is set in the Amazon river basin shortly after the end of WW II. The characters involve a group of men and one woman. They are on an expedition to find a legendary river, a tributary of the Amazon, and they want to find it in order to exploit its richest asset - oil. What struck me about this novel was the richness of language used to describe the indigenous peoples, the jungle, and the endless river. This language somehow lends the novel a nightmarish quality.
Entering the trail on the far side of the cabin, we moved on through a twisting tunnel of darkness... The endlessly repeated shadow-pattern of tree trunks, fronds and creepers glided towards us out of obscurity ahead, wavered and flickered in the yellow gleam of the flashlights and glided away into obscurity behind... On all sides of us the hum of the jungle insect-world was so vast and unbroken that it seemed not sound at all, but rather an encompassing vibrating silence. And through it, louder as we advanced, came the deep rumbling of the cachoeira. (cachoeira = a waterfall).
The plot involves a mystery, a love affair and escape. To be more accurate, it appears that most, if not all of the characters in the novel, are trying to escape from something: from civilisation, from the pain of guilt, or from themselves. And, in their attempt to escape and all the while, far up the river, the myth of El Dorado beckons them on even though they know that this myth of a kingdom will lead to the destruction of those who are obsessed by it. Ullman's novel is, ultimately, a tragedy - a melancholy story of people's desire for wealth or redemption and their willingness to risk death in order to achieve this.
It seemed to me that, in some ways, Ullman's River of the Sun is similar to Conrad's Heart of Darkness in its depiction of the agonies the characters suffer by their separation from civilization. For example, narrator Mark Allison is already a broken man when we meet him, having pushed his quest for knowledge beyond the limits of safety and seeing his wife perish in a plane crash of his own making. Christine Barna goes on her own quest for her husband whose sense of guilt has forced him into the depths of a jungle similar to the one where his morality failed him during World War II. Into the mix of these damaged people arrive others with similar failings. Some of them deal with their guilt through work, family, or duty. Others allow their humanity to disappear in a search for gold and wealth.
A word of warning! The book was written in the 1950s and, to some readers, the story might seem overblown and wordy in its its descriptions of the environment like the one quoted above. I admit I found them impressive. Not having visited the area, I felt I was actually in the place, felt the heat, the darkness, the claustrophobia, the bites of insects . The writer also uses expressions for people of colour and indigenous peoples which the modern reader might find offensive.
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