Read Around the World May 2023 – Guyana

Map and Fun facts about Guyana from this website:

• National Symbols: Waterlily (national flower), jaguar (national animal)
• Motto: “One people, one nation, one destiny”
• Guyana is located on the South American continent bordering the North Atlantic Ocean.
• Guyana is one of four South American countries located completely in the Northern Hemisphere. The capital city is called Georgetown.
• More than 75% of the land area are covered by forests.
• Guyana is the third smallest independent country in South America – after Suriname and Uruguay.
• This is the only South American country where English is the official language.
• The country’s name ‘Guyana’ derives from the indigenous world ‘Guiana’ that means ‘land of many waters’
• The most common sports are cricket, soccer and basketball.
• The Guyanese cuisine is heavily influenced by the various cooking styles of the Indians, Amerindians and African immigrants. The typical dishes in Guyana contain rice, leafy greens, cassava as well as meats and seafood including shrimps or crabs.

I chose to visit Guyana via My Bones and My Flute by Edgar Mittelholzer

An excellent old fashioned ghost story set in Guyana (or as it was then British Guiana) the story follows a family haunted by the flute playing ghost of a Dutch landowner whose family are murdered in the Berbice slave uprising.

Jan Pieter Voormanor (Or as he is better known in this book the flute playing ghost) had an interest in the occult and had been dabbling with dark forces something it appears he now regrets as the only way to end the haunting is to give his bones and his flute a Christian burial. Voorman has even considerately given directions to find his body unfortunately this is included with the cursed manuscript that sets him haunting people in the first place if they make the mistake of touching it.

The descriptions are evocative and it is easy to imagine yourself in the jungle with strange noises all around you, you can feel the heat and the oppression and even though the reader knows things will turn out all right in the end Mittelholzer manages to keep building the tension.

What I really enjoyed in the addition I read was the after notes by Kenneth Ramchand where we are given a detailed explanation of themes and motifs within the book along with how this work relates to other works by Mittelholzer.

I will definitely be picking up more of Mittelholzer’s books in the future.

Other Readers visited in the following ways:

Currey from Litsy – Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris rated pick.

Did you join us on this visit? Let us know what you read.

Next up Grenada – share your reading plans.