Published: 2008
Total Pages: 468
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Who are the melancholy-looking horseman and boy making their way to an abandoned settlement as night and a tropical storm set in? The boy and the horse are swept away, and the stranger, a European, finds shelter in a cavewhere he finds disturbing signs of recent Obeah ceremonies. Then he encounters the Obeah man himself, the Hamel of the books title. So begins a novel very much in the Gothic tradition, its themes those of perverted faith, lust for power and self-aggrandizement, sexual desire for an innocent and virtuous woman, but set against the backdrop of slavery, black rebellion, and the rights of the white land-owning classes of Jamaica.