SOURCE: “Spicy and Thick,” in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4801, April 7, 1995, p. 26.

In the following review, Clee comments on the thematic motifs in Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard.

Timothy Mo’s literary career has drifted up a creek. He started out with two critically acclaimed novels, The Monkey King (1978) and Sour Sweet (1982); the latter, a fresh and arresting portrait of the Chinese community in London, appeared on the Booker Prize shortlist and was made into a film. An Insular Possession (1986), for which he had changed publisher from Deutsch to Chatto for an advance that was lower than a rival offer, was also a Booker finalist. Next came The Redundancy of Courage, a bloated work for which the author, now represented by a new agent, secured from Chatto a substantial advance. It lost, the publisher reveals, a lot of money. Still, it had its admirers, and it too made the...