The Ministry Of Hope

Author Roy Heath continues the adventures of his Guyanan hero, Kwaku (first introduced in Kwaku, or the Man Who Couldn't Keep His Mouth Shut) in his latest book, The Ministry of Hope. As this new volume in the picaresque adventures of Kwaku opens, our hero has fallen from grace: his wife is blind, his twin sons have beaten him up, and his reputation as a healer is under fire when some of his clientele inconveniently die. But Kwaku Cholmondeley is not a quitter. Soon he devises a new plan: he will travel to Georgetown and set himself up as a purveyor of antique chamber pots--an item, he is assured, the tourists will go mad for. The chamber pots prove to be only the McGuffin that will get Kwaku to Georgetown; once there, he manages a meeting with the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Hope and soon finds himself working for the man.

It isn't long before Kwaku realizes that the secretary's reputation as an honest man is vastly overrated. The man steals Kwaku's ideas, sends him on nefarious errands and involves him with all kinds of insidious characters. The moral code under which Kwaku operated in the country doesn't apply in the city, and he faces the age-old dilemma of the city-bound migrant. How Kwaku not only survives his corrupt surroundings but actually transcends them is at the heart of Heath's comic, touching, and aptly named novel.