The Racket

by Anita Mason

Overview

A moral thriller of the first order, The Racket is set in the darkly shadowed Latin American landscape of modern-day Brazil, a vast country on the brink of anarchic lawlessness on every level and bankruptcy both material and spiritual. Against the background of urban decay and the rape of nature, social disintegration, and private despair, two people find themselves at dangerous odds with the institutional savagery around them.

One is an idealistic young teacher, Rosa Van Meurs, whose innocently written letter of protest against a corporate violation of native tribal land makes her the target of retribution. The other is her cousin Fabio, a poet and dreamer, who has drifted into the underworld to become an instrument of an evil, with no escape short of death. Inevitably these two opposites are drawn together, their fates intertwined in a tale taut with suspense as it moves toward moments of decision and final reckoning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781448208999
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	09/01/2012
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Anita Mason was born in Bristol, England. She read English at Oxford, lived in London, and worked in the publishing field for five years.

Mason is the author of eight novels to date, as well as a number of short stories. Her novels include, The Illusionist (1983), The War Against Chaos (1988), The Racket (1990), Angel (1994), and The Yellow Cathedral (2002).

Her latest novel is The Right Hand of the Sun, and was published by John Murray in September, 2008

The Illusionist was nominated for the 1983 Booker Prize in the UK.

Editorial Reviews

Works both as an understated thriller and a psychological journey....As refreshing,well-observed and original a novel as any reader could wish for.

Daily Telegraph

Like Graham Greene,whom this book in many ways evokes,Mason is good at telling stories...driving the interest this way and that but always,essentially,sweeping it forward.

Listener

The Racket has the pace of a thriller and confronts the tremors of a society founded on exploitation.

Observer

Mason lays claim,as too few of her contemporaries are prepared to do,to the grand territory of good and evil,moral truths and the condition of the soul.

Times Literary Supplement

Weighty moral questions of good and evil buttress this brooding narrative set in contemporary Brazil. A letter to the Washington Post protesting the treatment of that country's Indians sets in motion a complex, somewhat disjointed series of events in which a lone woman's starched integrity is illuminated against a background of cynical compromise and pervasive corruption. The admonitory epistle is written by Rosa Van Meurs, freethinking daughter of an esteemed anthropologist, who teaches an inspired brand of history in backwater Florianopolis. Her act angers a greasy politician who prefers that his interest in a gold mine near Indian land go unexamined. While barbs are flung at Rosa from this direction, more danger comes when her spineless cousin Fabio, a consummate liar fleeing the service of a violent racketeer, washes up at her apartment. Mason ( The Illusionist ) imaginatively paints such fantastical scenes as Fabio's cataloguing of a museum of grisly votive offerings. Evocative detail immerses the reader in the decaying social fabric of Brazil. Yet the narrative unevenly slows and speeds, catching, then losing the reader's interest, and the subtle shades of the moral code propounded here are simplistically resolved in the denouement. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Rosa, a likable, idealistic history teacher in Florianopolis, Brazil, writes a letter to the editor of an American newspaper, protesting a mining company's illegal road across a Brazilian Indian reserve. The international Indian rights community takes notice, as does Roberto Bandeira, an owner of the mining company and a powerful force in Florianopolis. Meanwhile, Rosa's cousin Fabio, a drifter and poet, seeks refuge with her from an underworld boss. Rosa, in fear for her job, and Fabio, in fear for his life, each face a wrenching moral decision. British author Mason, whose novel The Illusion ist ( LJ 7/84) was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1983, has written an intelligent, beautifully crafted novel. Her cool, restrained style carries conviction as she reveals a world of almost unimaginable corruption. Highly recommended.-- Patricia Ross, Westerville P.L., Ohio

Library Journal