SOURCE: Review of An Insular Possession, in World Literature Today, Vol. 62, No. 1, Winter 1988, p. 181.

In the following review, Jussawalla discusses Mo's skills and shortcomings as a writer as evidenced in An Insular Possession.

Timothy Mo’s novel An Insular Possession is a rather slow-moving account of British colonizers in the Far East—so slow-moving that it took me three concerted efforts to finish the book. Each time the major characters sit down to an elaborate meal, it is impossible to summon the courage to go on reading. The interminable meals mark unnecessary breaking points in the narrative, as the reader plods through “cold buffets of York Ham,” fowls, abalone, curry, crystallized fruit, “coffee chop-chop of sweet biscuits and syrup,” “eggs and grits from a chafing dish and curried fowl.” These are the days of the Raj throughout the colonies, however, and the practices of the implementers of the...