Originally censored by its British publisher The Beach at Falesá is a scathing critique of colonialism and economic imperialism that bravely takes on many of the 19th Century’ s strongest taboos: miscegenation imperialism and economic exploitation. It does so with a story that features a surprising and beguiling romance between an adventurous British trader and a young island girl against a background of increasing—and mysterious—hostility. Are the native islanders plotting against the couple or is it the other white traders? The result is a denouement that is astonishing in its violence. Told in the unadorned voice of the trader it is a story that deftly combines the form of the exotic adventure yarn with the moral and psychological questing of great fiction.
