One Big Damn Puzzler

<p>On an island paradise somewhere in the South Pacific Managua--the only native who can read or write--is busily translating <em>Hamlet</em> into pidgin English when a plane interrupts his noble work. Strapping on his false leg he makes his way to the landing strip to greet the unexpected arrival: William Hardt a young American lawyer driven by his misguided ambition to win reparations for the island's inhabitants. </p><p>Hardt is not the first white outsider to pay a visit; the British came earlier bringing their language the small pigs that run wild in the jungle and Shakespeare . . . and the Americans followed with guns land mines and Coca-Cola. But in this place of riotously logical ritual Hardt's determined quest to do good could make him the most devastating visitor of all. </p><p>Profoundly moving and achingly funny <em>One Big Damn Puzzler</em> brilliantly explores the collision of the twenty-first century with unsullied pagan reality--and establishes John Harding as one of the most imaginative contemporary chroniclers of the human condition.</p>