A Far Country draws you into a world of drought and deprivation where 14 year old Isabel leaves her drought-stricken village to head for the city to live with her cousin, to earn some money and particularly to find her adored, older brother, Isaias. Daniel Mason, author of The Piano Tuner, quickly draws you into her journey of discovery with his powerful descriptions of the rural area, ‘the backlands’ where the people have to mix soil with their food to make it go further and the shanty town in the city, ‘the settlements’ where pollution and violence abound. Isabel’s experience of both is told with an intensity and feeling that draws the reader into her suffering. Isabel is so close to her brother that she can feel his presence when he is near and they communicate without speaking but when she gets to the settlements, her ‘sixth sense’ seems to desert her in the chaos of city life and her search for her brother becomes increasingly frantic. A powerful read.
Raised in a remote village on the edge of a sugarcane plantation, fourteen-year-old Isabel was born with the gift and curse of 'seeing farther'. When drought and war grip the backlands, her brother Isaias joins a great exodus to a teeming city in the south. Soon Isabel must follow, forsaking the only home she's ever known, her sole consolation the thought of being with her brother again. But when she arrives, she discovers that Isaias has disappeared. Weeks and then months pass, until one day, armed only with her unshakeable hope, she descends into the chaos of the city to find him.
Strikingly visual, told with astonishing empathy, the story of Isabel’s quest – her dignity and determination, her deeply spiritual world – is a universal tale about the bonds of family and a sister's love for her brother; about journeys and longing, survival and true heroism: a tour de force of great emotional and narrative power.
Daniel Mason received his bachelor's degree in biology at Harvard in 1998 and spent a year studying malaria on the Thailand-Myanmar border, where much of his debut, The Piano Tuner, was written. He recently graduated from the University of California, San Francisco, where he was studying medicine.
