Kwaku: Or the Man Who Could Not Keep His Mouth Shut : A Novel

"This is the tale of Kwaku, who was reduced to a state of idiocy by intelligent men, but made a spontaneous recovery." So begins Roy Heath's Kwaku, or the Man Who Could Not Keep His Mouth Shut, a novel published in England in 1982 that appears for the first time in the United States this year. Kwaku Cholmondeley is the Guyanan version of Charles Dickens's Mr. Pickwick. Like Pickwick, Kwaku is an innocent of sorts, and like Pickwick, he falls in and out of adventures and meets all manner of odd and interesting characters. In Kwaku, Heath chronicles his title character's early life--a life that he'll continue to tell in the sequel The Ministry of Hope. As a child, Kwaku becomes convinced that "there was much protection in idiocy," and he wisely falls into the role of village idiot. Secretly, however, he nourishes dreams of greatness, and, once grown to manhood, he sets off in search of the perfect wife, the perfect job, and the perfect life. What follows is a perfectly hilarious account of one man's rise--and fall--all due to his inability to keep his tongue between his teeth.