As Flies to Whatless Boys: A Novel

Robert Antoni

Aug 2013 · Akashic Books

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Spanning from Victorian England to the West Indies, this is a prize-winning novel of adventure, love, comedy, and tragedy.
 
In 1845 London, engineer, philosopher, philanthropist, and bold-faced charlatan John Adolphus Etzler, has invented machines that he thinks will transform the division of labor and free all men. He forms a collective called the Tropical Emigration Society, and recruits a variety of London citizens to take his machines and his misguided ideas to form a proto-socialist, utopian community in the British colony of Trinidad.
 
Among his recruits is a young boy named Willy, who falls head-over-heels for the enthralling and wise Marguerite Whitechurch. Coming from the gentry, Marguerite is a world away from Willy’s laboring class. But as the voyage continues, and their love for one another strengthens, Willy and Marguerite may prove themselves to be the true idealists—in this “rollicking” tale that was named a Favorite Novel of the Year by Tin House and one of Edwidge Danticat’s Best Books of the Year in the New Yorker (Library Journal).
 
“William’s account of young love attests to Antoni’s fluency in the poetry of nostalgia. In words as vibrant as the personalities he creates, Antoni deftly captures unconquered territories and the risks we’re willing to take exploring them.” —Publishers Weekly
 
“The emotional influence of Willy’s narrative—his loving descriptions of the people who surround him—is profoundly effective . . . Strikes strong emotional chords.” —Kirkus Reviews

Autoren-Profil

Robert Antoni is the author of the landmark novel Divina Trace, for which he received a Commonwealth Writers' Prize and an NEA grant. His other books include Blessed Is the Fruit, My Grandmother's Erotic Folktales, and Carnival. He was a 2010 Guggenheim Fellow (for his work on As Flies to Whatless Boys), and recently received the NALIS Lifetime Literary Award from the Trinidad & Tobago National Library. He now lives in Manhattan and teaches in the graduate writing program at the New School University.