Though Roy A. K. Heath has lived in London since 1951, his eight published novels are set in Guyana (to which he frequently returns during holidays) and especially in Georgetown. For Heath, Georgetown life is a source of fascination and inspiration. A passage in his novel Orealla (1984) describes vividly the city's beauty and ugliness: "its inequalities, its prison, its avenues of jacaranda and flamboyant, its stretch of river and ocean" are side by side with reminders of its long colonial history, and reminders, too, of other traditions: "its drummers, who had never lost the art of summoning up the spirits of departed ancestors." Heath's intensely detailed, naturalistic rendering of the life, sights, sounds, and talk of Georgetown streets, slums, rum shops, brothels, and middle-class suburbs is often praised by his reviewers. His reference to ancestors illustrates a vital aspect of Heath's vision as a novelist, for though the surface...