The Kalimantaan - Tapa blanda

and sixty years ago, a young Englishman founded a private raj on the coast of Borneo. The world that resulted, boasting stone quays, elegant gardens, churches, and musical levees, eventually encompassed a territory the size of England, its expansion paid for in human heads. In this world, a version of Victorian colonial society collided with one of the most violent cultures on earth. The results were often startling--pockets of tenderness and extreme brutality appearing in odd corners. A small tribe of fugitives, adventurers, criminals, and saints--the madly talented and the simply mad--peopled this world. This is their story.

The deeper story resides in the realm of the heart. It is about love in absurd conditions, the tenacity of it as well as our ability to miss it repeatedly and with perverse genius.

C.S. Godshalk, who lives north of Boston, began Kalimantaan while working in southeast Asia. Her short fiction has been widely anthologized, her last two stories having been selected for Best American Short Stories by Mark Helprin and Richard Ford. C.S. Godshalk is at work on her second book, a contemporary novel set in New England.