The Devil is White

It is 1791 and a group of English gentlemen are recruiting settlers for a new world. Anti-slavers, they foresee the shining vision of a free colony in Africa where white and black can live together in harmony.

At first, all seems well. More than a hundred men, women and children sail from London on board the Pharaoh. They are bound for Muranda, an uninhabited island off the west coast of Africa that seems to be ideal: isolated, fertile, well watered. For a leader, they have a merchant, Sir George Whitcroft; a gallant seaman, Captain Coupland, to sail their ship; a doctor to treat their ills, a lawyer to make up their contracts, and a young aristocratic poet to record their exploits.

When they land, Muranda seems a paradise. Fruit hangs from the trees, the waters swarm with fish, the local king is friendly. Some begin to work. Others prefer to laze and swim, to drink and dance at night. But then the tropical rains begin and beat relentlessly down. Fever strikes arbitrarily and cruelly. The shelters they have half-built crumble. Argument and near mutiny break out, followed by disastrous desertion. Caspar, whose poetic Paradise turns to Hell; Hood, the carpenter painstakingly building the settlers' fortress; Coupland, the sailor, who must have order at all costs; Owen, the drunken doctor and his long-suffering young wife, Phoebe; Meares, the enemy within... How each copes with new and terrifying danger is portrayed with devastating clarity.