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Arabella Edge

Disaster has always shadowed the traveller. Today’s adventurers differ from their forebears only in the kinds of calamity they have cause to fear. Arabella Edge’s second novel – like her first, the award-winning The Company (2000) – will have readers thanking their lucky stars that shipwreck, at least, has gone the way of history. As its cover suggests, The God of Spring centres on Théodore Géricault’s masterpiece, The Raft of the Medusa (1819) – its painting, its painter and the real event it depicts.

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April 16, Ghana. We arrive to the pandemonium that is Accra Airport. It is as if a coup has happened and everyone is fleeing the country. The general dilapidation of the place seems vaguely familiar. Suddenly, I remember a BBC documentary series on airports around the world, which featured Accra. Nick changes US$100 at an exchange rate of 7000 cedis to one greenback. He returns with a huge wad of worn notes stashed in a large brown bag helpfully labelled with large dollar signs for all those milling around, eyeing us sharply, to see. We manage to negotiate our way into town via porters and taxi with 5000 cedi notes peeling off us in the form of tips.

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