tree for the birds

Vernon R.L. Head offers a novel of profound political dances, capturing ideas within our vast divides of separation, prompting a way for Africa to share solutions and leadership. Under the shadows of the tallest trees his story cries gently of the rachitic decrepitude that flickers on other continents inside suspense and the evilness of everyday lies. Set in the heart of Africa, this powerful story at the edge of damnation bends a reflection of all of us through the eyes of a birdwatcher who sees wings fly like escaping leaves on streams of eternal water and air for all. A Congolese boy becomes a young man shaped by the vast leaves held in the branches of tropical forests and truths, while all the time battling a ravaged world of globalised greed and death. Chrisnelt - the forty-seventh most popular name in his country - is a gardener of unusual genius: he learns from birds, insects and foreign weeds; and he counts raindrops falling from clouds, finding exquisite numbers that sing inside poems and proofs, screaming ultimately of the glorious and inevitable interconnection of peoples everywhere. Chrisnelt is guided by the ancient journey of water in his part of Africa: the constant flow to the ocean, and the rise back into the sky of mists, mentored by the deepest river on earth. And it is this powerful river - the Great Dancing Road - that leads him to answers on the other side of all our terrifying walls, to a place beyond sovereignties and the sick boundaries carving hideous borders across lands.

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