Book Review: The Dust Diaries by Owen Sheers (Faber and Faber, Pounds 16.99)

Summary

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THIS is not so much a book as an odyssey, real and imagined. It begins with a chance mention of Arthur Shearly Cripps,maverick missionary to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and great-great uncle of the author. Intrigued,Sheers reads an account of his life,its title faded to "ghost writing",and embarks on a mission of his own: one of imaginative revivification.

Initially,he is struck by the connections between Cripps and himself; both are poets,both "instinctive" runners,and although "separated by a hundred years of forgotten memories,by a hundred years of dust", they are related. But what really ignites his interest are the gaps in the story, wherein lie the man and not just his legacy.

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Book Review: The Dust Diaries by Owen Sheers (Faber and Faber, Pounds 16.99)

Cripps emerges as an au...

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