Ms Lakshmi Persaud's latest novel is truly a landmark of its rare type and also a landmark of hybrid Caribbean writing. Her mere command of the craft as a writer leaves no doubt of her vocation in this field. She is a writer, and one of those many path-breaking women writers now once again setting the pace in literature. Variety of style and of interest notwithstanding, she is as new in her sphere as Toni Morrison or as Arundhati Roy, Ama Ata Aidoo, and as Tony Cade. Those, including the author, who spoke at the Tower Hotel, Georgetown, launching of the book noted specially that the novel was an excursion into the first parliamentary dictatorship known as the Burnham dictatorship of Guyana. They launched it as a historical novel, and the writer was passionately at pains to reveal her inner compulsion to ensure by her own means and through her own God-given and self-cultivated talents that the experience should not be forgotten.

Those who set out to record human experience, in the form of story, with the aim of aiding memory have limits placed on their poetic licence and their freedom. And the limit is self-imposed once they proclaim the objective of helping society not to escape its responsibilities. The author over-credits the Town Mayans, through Devonish, the dictator, as he speaks, with high accomplishment in the use of the official language, yet she makes him confuse the 'who' with the 'whom,' perhaps by design, or just to prove how uninitiated she chooses to be.

The novel, For the Love Of My Name is highly participatory. The author lets various actresses and actors of the period tell the story, and in telling it reveal their own involvement, their own sensitivity, their own coarseness, their own humanity.

In order to escape dealing with the thankless issue of race, the author describes Guyanese (of the island Maya) as Mayans and organises the population into Town Mayans and Country Mayans. But there are no Country Mayans without Hindu names and no Town Mayans without the typical western names borne by African descendants. So the author achieves a measure of surface delicacy in the handling of her sensitive sub-theme, race, but leaves for the average reader a solid foundation of false, mass ethnic stereotyping. Prosaic social scientists often make the same reading. Art should be made of higher stuff! A fair reviewer of the author and her objectives will not dismiss the book, either for its merits or its dangers. It has to be remembered that she is not native to Guyana. Her husband is a Guyanese and an eminent one, and she has lived and worked in Guyana for a period. Moreover, a support speaker on the head table at the launching said that she had done thorough, or at least industrious research before embarking on her novel. Her powers of research and of investigation are indeed re-markable, but not adequate. Her familiarity with the domestic scene is rich, with a good grasp of social nuances at the personal level and that cannot be denied. She can readily be forgiven for naming the popular boulanger by its Trinidadian (Bon Airean) name, melongene. Most re-markable are her insights into character. Most remarkable, too, are the choices she makes in the timing and the context of the events she considers most demeaning and hostile to Country Mayans. After several months of reflection, this reviewer has not found a satisfying explanation.

In her repertoire of story-tellers and revealers, she makes the villain of the piece, Forbes Burnham, take on the persona of Robert Devonish. Cheddi Jagan barely features, dimly like a mistake, a shadow, a naïve error of ethnic fate, in the person of Emmanuel Pottaro, the only Country Mayan in the story without a typical Country Mayan name, but with one for all the world, like a Town Mayan. By this device, the advantage taken of Country Mayans is brought into sharp relief. While the Town May-ans have an astute, though oppressive leader, dedicated in the author's eyes to their cause, his counterpart is drawn, quite falsely, as a Country Mayan more interested in unity than in his people. Then there is that Country Mayan gem of rare beauty of character, Vasu, an ardent Hindu humanist who stands in place of some other historical figure, or is a welcome and refreshing creation of the author's. These Vasus are the salt of the earth. But the Earth in her moulding has other salts, a few Town Mayans. Thus it is not her intention to value individuals by race, or in her scheme according to whether they are urban or rural. She places two of these gems in the President's household. They read him minutely, freely exercising their minds and doing what they can subtly through the paramount household machinery to defeat whatever it is in their power to defeat, to relieve, or to frustrate. These are Aunt Maude, and the President's sister Marguerite. Finally, he dies by their hand. Notably, neither Pattaro's wife nor Devonish's features in the rendering. At the launching of the book, the author expressed the view that some of the atrocities recalled could be ranked with Kosovo and Rwanda and appealed to her audience not to neglect the duty of remembering them, or be tempted into the cowardice of forgetting them. She seems blissfully unaware that in Guyana we forget our own offences and remember those of 'the other.' In this the writer, though not a born Guyanese, was typically Mayan.

Her efforts to remain above race are admirable, but not admirably successful, though she adopts many devices to make her purpose known. It is not her purpose in the end that deserves the critics' challenge, but her Mayan blindness at some crucial stages of the plot. The Country Mayans have all those virtues which lead to prosperity. She is kind to Town Mayans and wishes them well, except for their political choices and the atrocities they seem to support when carried out by some of their number, who, her novel claims, are the only offenders. Yet she pays tribute to the human spirit and human diversity by selecting out four women and one man, so far as memory serves, among the Town Mayans who are dissidents of the general pattern of allegiance of the Town Mayan.

Robert Devonish, remains the Political Leader of the Town Mayans and supreme head of government throughout the action, until his death after surgery, while the Leader of the Country Mayans, Emmanuel Pattaro, dies early in the plot. In real life he outlived Devonish, his junior, by a dozen years. It is, of course, her right to appoint her characters a timely quietus or exit, as it suits the story, or her aim as author. Again, the Town Mayans have an adept, wicked astute leader while the Country Mayans have a leader who is represented as sincere and naive. Is this a metaphor to suggest that while alive Emmanuel Pottaro was useless to the Country Mayans and cared too much about unity of all? Has she never heard of the glorious days of Pottaro when for seven years he headed the still colonial government, and uttered the public slogan, "In a democracy every peasant has a gun"?

Most impressive is the friendship between two women, one Subah, a diaspora Country Mayan who comes home for indefinite periods and the other a Town Mayan vendor, Dorothy, member of the WRM, in life WRSM, who delivers banned items to homes, and so encounters Subah. The two, as they needed to do, by degrees, strike up a friendship. For the first time Subah gradually gets a picture of the suffering of the Town Mayans who had been thought to be priviliged. In fact, the truly privileged were the mask wearers. This privilege of wearing a mask graded according to how one stood in the favour of the supreme, had become the open door to preference and privilege. The highest ranking masks were purple. Aunt Maude and the President's sister kept their masks, lending them to persons needing protection. So much did the elite at all levels rely on the masks that they wore them all the time until face and mask were no longer distinguishable, the mask merging with the skin of the face. So life was an ongoing lie.

As an aside, Persaud was not the first woman novelist to attempt an X-ray of the pre l992 Mayan regime. Guyana Betrayal was a passionate, slow-moving novel by Norma De Haarte, Town Mayan, published in Canada before the fall of the dicatatorship. It fingers the symptoms of deformation of the Devonish movement from a period before it came to office and later took power and is far less kind to the Hoffman (Persaud's Devonish) than her Country Mayan counterpart, who presents him as a man of considerable gifts misapplied and abused because of a tragic-historical flaw. Persaud makes him speak as he records his experiences for posterity in elevated prose, as he imparts high-mindedness to all his devices; De Haarte has him off-guard, or with deliberate lack of conscience haranguing the faithful in private and in public. De Haarte could have sheltered under the racial tent but feels impelled in conscience to take to the open skies in the interests of the deluded 'victors' of the whole society and in defiance of her kind; Persaud, for all her concerns never questions the use of Country Mayan influence or abuses in office. She never examines, or lets anyone examine, much less question, the attitude of Country Mayans toward the Town Mayans, as she has allowed them to be questioned. Although De Haarte does not pretend an inside knowledge of Country May-ans, she hits the regime for falsifying elections and disregards the many who it has been claimed have reaped short-term benefits. Persaud lets Devonish's sublime self-delusion, or aspiration as Deliverer of his people, express itself in logical-seeming terms; De Haarte breaks through the sea of delusion with bold strokes and reveals what revolts her in the nature of that well-endowed, misguided son of the Mayan people.

Ms Persaud must be saluted for trying in her way of a novelist to stand up for the country of her adoption, and for her concern with its values and the path it took after independence. De Haarte in this regard with far less symbolism if any, apart from created personas, writing an earthy novel of real people full of the ambience of the city but with strong moral underpinnings and content was concerned with the lack of legitimacy and the abuse of power. Some Country Mayans in Guyana would ignore this book since it does not trade in sound bites and since, losing faith in the one leadership, does not seem to leap to embrace the other.

As already said, Persaud divides the Guyanese population into Country Mayans and Town Mayans, "which things are an allegory." The distinction is a political stereotype which is nowhere true, and should not become the shibboleth of artists of any vocation. It does not hold the mirror up to nature. When we call them by ethnic names we do not confine them to any given space and do not raise questions about the location of indigenous peoples. It does, fortunately, identify both groups as Mayans (Guyanese) but beyond that it has little validity. Moreover, if Devonish's tribe must be seen as Town Mayans, then it is necessary to note that some of the most glorious pages of Mayan history have been written by Town Mayans in the Country areas. It is a literary device that can only be justified by accepting an arbitrary stereotype. Why should urbanised Country Mayans not enjoy their dual status as both urban and Indian, and why should their social journeys be ignored? Why should the solid traditions of so-called Town Mayans in the rural or country areas be erased by the livid imagination of an artist, simply because the majority is now urban? Where does memory come in, if all we are asked to forget is scrambled or confused by licence?

Devonish is writing his memoirs by dictating into a recorder. He does not trust posterity with reporting on his motives and very carefully gives justification for his measures. He must do his own self-justification. His literary executrix seems to be Maguerite, who must carefully guard the integrity of the record. This sample is so typical that it could be highly representative.

"Moral disdain is not for the poor. They will flock wherever the water is clean, the grass succulent and the air invigorating, irrespective of the political crimes committed to create this opportunity. Moral disdain is not for the wealthy either, if the returns on their investments are attractive. How could I therefore, so steeped in the awareness of men's pretences and games, not play by the rules formulated by the offspring of terrorists, buccaneers, slave traders, owners of slaves -rascals all." So the author not only indicts Devonish but offers the accused the chance of an ample defence. Readers will be fascinated with the seances of one character after another, revealing innermost feelings about the political atmosphere and the human relations in which are both so arresting. So far as the author wishes to convey a sense of alignments in the society to the reader, she classes the academics at the university system throughout the Caribbean Region, as Devonish supporters or apologists. AUL (Associated University Luminaries) is what she calls them. Doubtless Devonish had his admirers in the university system, but the unversities also had centres of opposition to all that Devonish stood for. This again is not a careful reflection of how things were. Many leading academics were a thorn in the flesh of the regime and of the dictator. A goodly number of them of them were Pottaro supporters. Devonish did not hide the fact, and it often drove him to define academic freedom in a certain defensive way. In Guyana itself where the action was, there was a kidnap attempt on CY Thomas, an assassination attempt on Josh Ramsammy and even before that time the persecution of Mohamed Insanally. It is more likely that she sees the University activists as ideological foes of her own outlook.

This reviewer will not shrink from challenging the author's treatment of an ethnic disaster in the country she calls the island of Maya. In the inter-ethnic violence she selects only offences against Country Mayans. One of the landmark incidents of inter-ethnic aggression she touches on is, of course, the virtual expulsion of Indians from Ica, (Wismar, to your better understanding). Another is the valiant stand of Kamilia, (Kowsilia) in the ranks of the sugar workers, when, like so many on both sides of the ethnic conflict of the sixties, she was cruelly mown down. The disappointment with the author who, as a novelist is expected to put things in context is that she records not one atrocity of Country Mayans against Town Mayans. She ignores the whole political history, and not unlike the nations of Yugoslavia, she grinds out the grievances of their side only.

What a powerful appeal for peace the book would have been if she had recaptured the atmosphere of attack and retaliation which marked the events of sixties, instead of repeating the claim that it was one-sided, instead of implying or even giving evidence that the Country Mayans were the only victims of aggression.

This book must be valued for its artistic excellence and challenged for the games it plays with history. If the author makes Devonish in his "confession and self justification" recall the date of a petition against Indian Immigration to the Colonial Office by Africans (Town Mayans as she would say) how could she miss the fact the some Indian activists of that time took also a position against the traffic. Is it that some opposition was justified and some was not? If Country Mayans also opposed at some point the coming of more indentured servants, why should Town Mayans not also have a point of view, tarnished though it was with the Afro-Saxon view of civilisation. Regarding Ica, how could she know of Ica and miss the coastal atrocities against Town Mayans in the rural areas which immediately preceded the Ica assault and those which followed it? Do these lapses qualify an author to appeal credibly against amnesia or convenient loss of memory? Is exact timing valid in some cases and not in others? Most startling is the fact that Persaud locates, very artistically, the Ica atrocities within the time in office of Robert Devonish. She does the same without the tractor death of Kowsilia at Leonora. Yet it is elementary and beyond dispute that both these incidents took place while Emmanuel Pottaro was premier of the country. No doubt there is an explanation based on some higher artistic licence known to the professionals and the initiated. Or is it that the atrocities seem greater if they were done by the supporters of the government in office?

The novel has merits also which show clearly that the author is no Hindu or Indian chauvinist. Her late-arriving, minor character flays the habits of the Country Mayan mothers-in-law and the standards of obedience expected of daughters-in-law. The author has feminist sympathies of much clarity and is a welcome breath of fresh air in many ways.

In the novel she does not forget Walter Rodney, who is given the persona of Gavin, and is identified by specific statements which came out of Rodney's mouth. It is symptomatic that Persaud in conceiving even Rodney falls back on some lurking rule that loyalty to the ethnic leader is not avoidable. For her, Rodney was not a fresh political and social revolutionary influence, but merely a dissident member of the PNC, the Town Mayan party, who, after resisting from the inside, went public and got his just deserts no doubt as a deserter. Unfortunately this location of Rodney is in keeping with the mind of both Country Mayans and Town Mayans who would prefer a straight racial competition and who would therefore use all means to represent any gifted dissident Mayan as persons belonging in fact to the ethnic fold. Thus extremist country Mayans would have tales of suspicions of Rodney meeting secretly with Devonish and Mayans would convince themselves that such a game was in fact on. This is how they both told themselves to stay put politically. Persaud's claim to being a novelist with a new mission can be justified only by expressing and not denying what is new in the relations she is reviewing. Inventiveness is not a cure for amnesia.

The placing of Gavin in the fold of the Devonish party -what can it mean? Is it a reluctance to welcome new attitudes among a younger political generation with a motivator who is as capable as Rodney of attracting change-makers across race gender and even class? This is one of the important literary problems of the novel There is nothing to explain the device. If For The Love Of My Name is an allegory, it is does not have the ideal consistency of the best allegories.

No wonder Maya was sinking as its dictator was dying. Persaud, as a geographer, may be warning Guyanese scientists of the danger facing the coast from the much disputed global warming. But the image has a sinister connotation for the Spirit of our people. This is not surprising when, for whatever literary purpose, an accomplished writer denies the relative newness of Rodney and buries him before death in the past she so much abhors.

She chooses to find him there, in that past, 1980, after the whole experience which her novel reveals and could have revealed more truly with more care and more truth. Is the violation of Rodney's conscience proof that she is not politically tribal? That in her view good things can come out of Nazareth? Free expression of the artist is precious. When the genre is a written one and is a writing which claims historical and moral authority, it is open to examination on those as well as on the usual criteria.

Why then read the book? Should I teach that the Enmore martyrdom took place in l957 when PPP Minister was Minister of Labour and then admonish the world not to forget it? This kind of mismatching of tragedy and circumstance may cause people to ignore both.

Why then read, or review the book? It is the second known to this reviewer by a Caribbean writer and the second by a woman, which seeks to preserve in story portions of Guyana's experience of decades still recent. Ultimately its tampering with political responsibility for injustice, and its trespassing on a most significant personal history challenges its pretensions to being either truly revealing or truly healing. Its artistry, its dramatic sequences are rich in form and incident. For that same reason its poetic licence with incident is too selective to be ignored.