{"product_id":"night-of-the-rambler-9781617751813","title":"Night of the Rambler","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"[Readers] will be rewarded with deeper insight into the political and economic turmoil engulfing that region.\" --\u003cem\u003eHistorical Novel Society\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cem\u003eThe Night of the Rambler\u003c\/em\u003e is revolutionary, a reliquary, an impressionist tale of men who are by turns melancholy, raging, and often comic, their voices unique to this place and given a singular story.\" --Susan Straight, author of \u003cem\u003eBetween Heaven and Here\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith echoes of Junot Díaz, Vargas Llosa, and Zadie Smith, an exhilarating voyage across the Caribbean during a time of revolution from debut novelist Kobbé.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn June 9, 1967, sixteen men from Anguilla, a forgotten island in the Caribbean, set sail aboard a thirty-five-foot sloop, the \u003cem\u003eRambler\u003c\/em\u003e, to make the night-time journey to St. Kitts, where they intended to carry out a coup d'état and install a new government sympathetic to their separatist cause. Set against the turbulent background of world politics in the sixties, \u003cem\u003eThe Night of the Rambler\u003c\/em\u003e tells the story of a misinformed and misconceived plan, carried out incompetently by a group of scarcely trained and ill-equipped amateurs who escape calamity by mere coincidence. And yet, somehow, the main purpose of their mission, the furtherance of Anguilla's struggle to dissociate itself from the newly formed state of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla and to return to the British colonial fold, is significantly strengthened by this, quite possibly the most outrageous episode in the history of revolutions.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLoosely based on the historical facts surrounding the Anguilla Revolution of 1967, \u003cem\u003eThe Night of the Rambler\u003c\/em\u003e unfolds across the fifteen hours that lapse between the moment when the \"rebels\" board the motorboat that will take them across the strait to St. Kitts, and the break of dawn the following day, when it becomes obvious that the unaccomplished mission will have to be aborted. The novel consciously moves away from the \"historical\" category, purposely altering at will the sequence of \"facts\" narrated, collating fully fictional episodes with vaguely accurate anecdotes and replacing the protagonists with fictional characters. At turns highly dramatic and hilarious, Kobbé brings deep honesty to the often-unexamined righteousness of revolution.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith echoes of Salman Rushdie's \u003cem\u003eMidnight's Children\u003c\/em\u003e, Junot Díaz's \u003cem\u003eThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao\u003c\/em\u003e, and Mario Vargas Llosa's \u003cem\u003eConversation in the Cathedral\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Night of the Rambler\u003c\/em\u003e touches upon the universal topics of freedom and self-determination with humor and sensibility, creating an alternative reality that is informed by real life but ultimately governed by the uncanny.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMontague Kobb?\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and for the past decade has resided at different times in Bristol, Leeds, London, and Munich. He has had close ties to the Caribbean island of Anguilla, the setting for his debut novel, for over twenty-five years. He maintains a regular literary column in the \u003ci\u003eWEEKender\u003c\/i\u003e supplement of Sint Maarten's \u003ci\u003eDaily Herald\u003c\/i\u003e and his work has been published in Anguilla, Antigua, Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina, Venezuela, Spain, and the United Kingdom.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Akashic Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50856081195282,"sku":"9781617751813","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_d1c53a53-8415-4851-af4c-7300f0a30bda.jpg?v=1737494928","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/night-of-the-rambler-9781617751813","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}