The Lunatic

A madman named Aloysius lives alone in the Jamaican bush until a German photojournalist named Inga snaps pictures of him as he sleeps. She soon moves in with him, and their life together is filled with misunderstandings, violence and much sex. In this tale of erotic fun in the sun, trees and animals are personifiedfor example, when Inga, in a fit of anger, bites a tree trunk, the tree cries in pain. But this fanciful novel also has a political edge: Inga comes to believe that poor Jamaicans should hate those who are rich, and she promotes an uprising. Although The Lunatic can be read as a comic novel, it also can be considered a warning against both greed and apathy. (May)