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The Intended by David Dabydeen
Book by Dabydeen, David
Paperback
First published May 4, 2000
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About the author
David Dabydeen
34 books23 followersDavid Dabydeen (born 9 December 1955) is a Guyanese-born critic, writer, novelist and academic. Since 2010 he has been Guyana's ambassador to China.
Dabydeen is the author of novels, collections of poetry and works of non-fiction and criticism, as editor as well as writer. His first book, Slave Song (1984), a collection of poetry, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Quiller-Couch Prize. A further collection, Turner: New and Selected Poems, was published in 1994, and reissued in 2002; the title-poem, Turner is an extended sequence or verse novel responding to a painting by J. M. W. Turner, "Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying – Typhoon coming on" (1840).
His first novel, The Intended (1991), the story of a young Asian student abandoned in London by his father, won the Guyana Prize for Literature. Disappearance (1993) tells the story of a young Guyanese engineer working on the south coast of England who lodges with an elderly woman. The Counting House (1996) is set at the end of the nineteenth century and narrates the experiences of an Indian couple whose hopes of a new life in colonial Guyana end in tragedy. The story explores historical tensions between indentured Indian workers and Guyanese of African descent. His 1999 novel, A Harlot's Progress, is based on a series of pictures painted in 1732 by William Hogarth (who was the subject of Dabydeen's PhD) and develops the story of Hogarth's black slave boy. Through the character of Mungo, Dabydeen challenges traditional cultural representations of the slave. His latest novel, Our Lady of Demerara, was published in 2004.
Dabydeen has been awarded the title of fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the second West Indian writer (V.S. Naipaul was the first) and the only Guyanese writer to receive the title.
In 2001 Dabydeen wrote and presented The Forgotten Colony, a BBC Radio 4 programme exploring the history of Guyana. His one-hour documentary Painting the People was broadcast by BBC television in 2004.
The Oxford Companion to Black British History, co-edited by Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, appeared in 2007.
In 2007, Dabydeen was awarded the Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) Award for his outstanding contribution to literature and the intellectual life of the Indian diaspora.
(from Wikipedia)
Dabydeen is the author of novels, collections of poetry and works of non-fiction and criticism, as editor as well as writer. His first book, Slave Song (1984), a collection of poetry, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Quiller-Couch Prize. A further collection, Turner: New and Selected Poems, was published in 1994, and reissued in 2002; the title-poem, Turner is an extended sequence or verse novel responding to a painting by J. M. W. Turner, "Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying – Typhoon coming on" (1840).
His first novel, The Intended (1991), the story of a young Asian student abandoned in London by his father, won the Guyana Prize for Literature. Disappearance (1993) tells the story of a young Guyanese engineer working on the south coast of England who lodges with an elderly woman. The Counting House (1996) is set at the end of the nineteenth century and narrates the experiences of an Indian couple whose hopes of a new life in colonial Guyana end in tragedy. The story explores historical tensions between indentured Indian workers and Guyanese of African descent. His 1999 novel, A Harlot's Progress, is based on a series of pictures painted in 1732 by William Hogarth (who was the subject of Dabydeen's PhD) and develops the story of Hogarth's black slave boy. Through the character of Mungo, Dabydeen challenges traditional cultural representations of the slave. His latest novel, Our Lady of Demerara, was published in 2004.
Dabydeen has been awarded the title of fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the second West Indian writer (V.S. Naipaul was the first) and the only Guyanese writer to receive the title.
In 2001 Dabydeen wrote and presented The Forgotten Colony, a BBC Radio 4 programme exploring the history of Guyana. His one-hour documentary Painting the People was broadcast by BBC television in 2004.
The Oxford Companion to Black British History, co-edited by Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, appeared in 2007.
In 2007, Dabydeen was awarded the Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) Award for his outstanding contribution to literature and the intellectual life of the Indian diaspora.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 5, 2016
Last week I watched a BBC documentary that opened a magic door onto a bizarre world that I never even knew existed, the world of professional e-gamers competing at top level in League of Legends. When I described this testosterone charged world to a friend, his immediate response was "Those guys must have really shitty sex lives." No, actually, that is the seriously weird thing about it. They have no sex life whatever. Young men, and they are nearly all men, and of necessity young because the speed of their reactions peaks at around the age of twenty, who lead a monk-like existence in specially dedicated houses, practising around twelve hours a day and then spending another four or five hours on analysis, strategy, tactics. A sort of geek academy. The special ones. There is a huge fan community, and I'm sure that just like any other celebrities they get their fair share of wannabes hanging round the warm-up lounge, but they are utterly dedicated (they have to be to stay at the top) and any kind of outside relationship is seen as mere distraction.
I mention this because it sat in incongruous juxtaposition to David Dabydeen's semi-autobiographical novel which, let us say, foregrounds the rather more natural obsessions of adolescents left to negotiate sex without any kind of guidance except from each other.
I wondered if the lack of any guidance had to do with their family background (or lack of any family) or if it was that time. Probably both. David Dabydeen came to the UK from Guyana in 1968, just at the time of that infamous 'Rivers of Blood' speech by Enoch Powell. A time of thoughtlessly vile discrimination, yes, and as I recall a time when parents didn't have frank and free conversations with their offspring, at least not in my experience. Certainly the narrator of this tale is worse-off than most in that he has been abandoned to social services, and for lack of any other form of accommodation is taken to a Home.
However I don't want to create the impression that the whole of this humorous and poetic little jewel of a book centres on the hero getting his rocks off. That would do it a disservice indeed, for it is a wondrous sharing of the so-called 'immigrant experience' (as if there were only one). The narrator is focussed on seizing the opportunity to follow his aunt's farewell advice '..but you must tek education....pass plenty exam.' And at the same time trying his damnest to retain a little, just a very little of his identity: 'you is we, remember you is we.' His group of friends are both: both real believable characters and illustrations of alternative paths in the forest of identity and relations between whites, African-Caribbeans and Asians. Heart-stoppingly tragic Joseph, flotsam on the waves of indifference at the Home and elsewhere. Intelligent, doomed Joseph, an artist and clairvoyant. Nasim, beaten to within an inch of his life by paki-bashers, Pocket Patel who goes into his family's business to make money out of the white man's weakness for porn, Shaz who joins the gangsters :- but the narrator wants out, gets out, teks plenty education:
It is literature that saves him. Saves us.
"Essential reading" it says on the back of my copy, and for once I would agree. To know who we are, who they are. All this, and Conrad as well. Sigh.
I mention this because it sat in incongruous juxtaposition to David Dabydeen's semi-autobiographical novel which, let us say, foregrounds the rather more natural obsessions of adolescents left to negotiate sex without any kind of guidance except from each other.
Shaz knew more about sex than any of us boys and it was his erudition which drew me to him. At an early age he was versed in mysterious acronyms and abbreviations like CP, DOM, SUB, 'O' and 'A' levels, DIY, AC/DC, etc. Compared to Nasim, Shaz was positively brilliant. It was Nasim who startled me one day as we were waiting for a No. 88 bus at Tooting Bec Station by declaring that babies were born through the anus. He was adamant on the point and scoffed at my dissent. Even I, a complete virgin, knew that babies were born up-front, though the precise mechanism was still extremely puzzling.
I wondered if the lack of any guidance had to do with their family background (or lack of any family) or if it was that time. Probably both. David Dabydeen came to the UK from Guyana in 1968, just at the time of that infamous 'Rivers of Blood' speech by Enoch Powell. A time of thoughtlessly vile discrimination, yes, and as I recall a time when parents didn't have frank and free conversations with their offspring, at least not in my experience. Certainly the narrator of this tale is worse-off than most in that he has been abandoned to social services, and for lack of any other form of accommodation is taken to a Home.
The Home was in fact a prison for youth, and the innocent who were taken there were soon converted to criminal ways. Boys abandoned by parents through no fault of their own quickly grew into little gangsters.
However I don't want to create the impression that the whole of this humorous and poetic little jewel of a book centres on the hero getting his rocks off. That would do it a disservice indeed, for it is a wondrous sharing of the so-called 'immigrant experience' (as if there were only one). The narrator is focussed on seizing the opportunity to follow his aunt's farewell advice '..but you must tek education....pass plenty exam.' And at the same time trying his damnest to retain a little, just a very little of his identity: 'you is we, remember you is we.' His group of friends are both: both real believable characters and illustrations of alternative paths in the forest of identity and relations between whites, African-Caribbeans and Asians. Heart-stoppingly tragic Joseph, flotsam on the waves of indifference at the Home and elsewhere. Intelligent, doomed Joseph, an artist and clairvoyant. Nasim, beaten to within an inch of his life by paki-bashers, Pocket Patel who goes into his family's business to make money out of the white man's weakness for porn, Shaz who joins the gangsters :- but the narrator wants out, gets out, teks plenty education:
All that is behind me now, I will never come back this way again, I tell myself, looking out for the taxi. It's true, I never really knew any of them anyway, time moved so quickly and I was never in one secure place long enough to form perfect conclusions. In the next three years, allocated my own room in college out of recognition of worth rather than need, I will make lasting friends. Patel's taunt that I want to become a white man is ridiculous. All I want is to escape from this dirt and shame called Balham, this coon condition, this ignorance that prevents me from knowing anything, not even who we are, who they are.
It is literature that saves him. Saves us.
"Essential reading" it says on the back of my copy, and for once I would agree. To know who we are, who they are. All this, and Conrad as well. Sigh.
March 13, 2019
A touching and rather poignant novel about rites of paasage in the asian community in mid 80s London (identifiable from the video shop with VHS and Betamax!). It is semi-autobiographical and the first part of the book is set in the rural Guyana of Dabydeen's childhood. The childhood descriptions are vivid and startling and often humourous. Throughout there are sad and hilarious descriptions of rites of passage issues; discomfort with bodies, what the hell do you do with the opposite sex (and why), clothes, casual racism in England, moving to manhood by getting a job, the author's struggle to get into Oxford.
Conrad's Heart of Darkness is one of the backdrops, the title being taken from Kurtz's Intended; the awfulness of slavery and colonialism are not far away.
The whole book is haunted by the character of Joseph; not a dominant character in terms of time on the page, but such a powerful creation (not sure if it is based on a real person). Joseph has been in jail, he becomes fascinated with the author and his books and learning; insisting on hearing the stories as he cannot read himself and then immediately grasping the deeper meaning for himself. Joseph is sublimely intelligent and innocent and his fate truly awful. There is a twisting together of hope and terrible loss and Kurtz's last words "the horror, the horror" are discernible in Joseph.
The author moves on to Oxford and leaves his teenage years in London behind him; he is reflecting later in life.
The novel jumps around a little, but in a connected sort of way when you remember the Conradian backdrop. Loved it.
29/05/2013
Editing this as I am reading Disappearance at the moment; an excellent book as well; and realising the debt to Wilson Harris. Harris in his writings often dispenses with conventional plot; when he does use realism is is more often than not linked to colonialism. The contrast between rural Guyana and London has much more meaning than I initially realised.
Conrad's Heart of Darkness is one of the backdrops, the title being taken from Kurtz's Intended; the awfulness of slavery and colonialism are not far away.
The whole book is haunted by the character of Joseph; not a dominant character in terms of time on the page, but such a powerful creation (not sure if it is based on a real person). Joseph has been in jail, he becomes fascinated with the author and his books and learning; insisting on hearing the stories as he cannot read himself and then immediately grasping the deeper meaning for himself. Joseph is sublimely intelligent and innocent and his fate truly awful. There is a twisting together of hope and terrible loss and Kurtz's last words "the horror, the horror" are discernible in Joseph.
The author moves on to Oxford and leaves his teenage years in London behind him; he is reflecting later in life.
The novel jumps around a little, but in a connected sort of way when you remember the Conradian backdrop. Loved it.
29/05/2013
Editing this as I am reading Disappearance at the moment; an excellent book as well; and realising the debt to Wilson Harris. Harris in his writings often dispenses with conventional plot; when he does use realism is is more often than not linked to colonialism. The contrast between rural Guyana and London has much more meaning than I initially realised.
April 17, 2023
If i had a nickel for everytime this book used FEET as a "metaphor" I will have 2 nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird it happended twice, right?
This book was strange I am not going to lie. From weird sexual situations to the superiority complex of the protagonist. Everything felt a little off and not in a good way. I only read it for my literature courses to be honest.
This book was strange I am not going to lie. From weird sexual situations to the superiority complex of the protagonist. Everything felt a little off and not in a good way. I only read it for my literature courses to be honest.
January 7, 2016
*spoilers included*
I really enjoyed the beginning of this book- I felt like I could really empathise with the narrator as his feelings and reasons about being an outsider were extremely similar to things that I've experienced in my life. However, once the switching back and forth of the time line began, I just started to really dislike the writing style as new characters were introduced and I couldn't figure out whether they were from the narrators past or present and there was never any clear indication as to when the author would switch time lines, it was all kind of shoved into one part (the book is in parts not chapters) through the use of paragraphs which just did not work for me.
Also, I feel as though the characters and their development throughout the novel was really weak. For example, Patel is introduced in part 1 as a friend of the narrators, we then hear nothing about him until he appears again nearing the end of the novel and we discover he now runs his own illegal pornography business. What the hell?? And Shaz just so casually becomes a bloody pimp? The only character that I genuinely felt for and really liked was Joseph; he was so broken yet nobody could really see just how much he needed help. My heart went out to him and the news of his death made me so emotional.
Nearing the end of the novel I began to hate the narrator as we started delving into his personal thoughts and conflicting feelings about people and life in general. His constant battle of wanting to be accepted by the white people/not accepting himself and his background (identifying as Indian whenever he was faced with a crowd of rowdy black characters yet feeling ashamed of the Indian culture when around white people)/the feelings of wanting to be superior just became tiresome and quite frankly, I would have really preferred the book to be from any other characters point of view.
I read this novel for my Writing, Identity and Nation class for university and I do think it's an extremely interesting piece of work for a critical analysis- the themes are hard hitting and some aspects of the novel are hard to swallow but overall, it was a bit meh.
I really enjoyed the beginning of this book- I felt like I could really empathise with the narrator as his feelings and reasons about being an outsider were extremely similar to things that I've experienced in my life. However, once the switching back and forth of the time line began, I just started to really dislike the writing style as new characters were introduced and I couldn't figure out whether they were from the narrators past or present and there was never any clear indication as to when the author would switch time lines, it was all kind of shoved into one part (the book is in parts not chapters) through the use of paragraphs which just did not work for me.
Also, I feel as though the characters and their development throughout the novel was really weak. For example, Patel is introduced in part 1 as a friend of the narrators, we then hear nothing about him until he appears again nearing the end of the novel and we discover he now runs his own illegal pornography business. What the hell?? And Shaz just so casually becomes a bloody pimp? The only character that I genuinely felt for and really liked was Joseph; he was so broken yet nobody could really see just how much he needed help. My heart went out to him and the news of his death made me so emotional.
Nearing the end of the novel I began to hate the narrator as we started delving into his personal thoughts and conflicting feelings about people and life in general. His constant battle of wanting to be accepted by the white people/not accepting himself and his background (identifying as Indian whenever he was faced with a crowd of rowdy black characters yet feeling ashamed of the Indian culture when around white people)/the feelings of wanting to be superior just became tiresome and quite frankly, I would have really preferred the book to be from any other characters point of view.
I read this novel for my Writing, Identity and Nation class for university and I do think it's an extremely interesting piece of work for a critical analysis- the themes are hard hitting and some aspects of the novel are hard to swallow but overall, it was a bit meh.
October 6, 2010
it's not quite accurate to call a book that includes a suicide torching, frank sexual language, alcoholism, domestic violence, and racial violence lovely. but it is. dabydeen's novel moves brilliantly through time and place, giving life to the troubles of the remains of empire from the eyes of a young man. the tension between self-worth and "high" culture is especially well handled. every page calls into question the concept of value - a continuous struggle. dabydeen's notions of "the pornography of empire" underscore the realities of the body in the context of imperial projects.
May 25, 2011
Truly a Goodread... The journey o this young indian boy from Guyana to London and the indentity struggles in goes through probably rings true for many expatriates. A real story.
March 10, 2020
Though fictional, this loss of innocence novel is based on the author's experiences as a teenager after he migrated from Guyana to England in the late 1960s.
Trying to come to terms with his semi-abandoned state in London, the novel's subject looks back with mixed emotions on the harsh life in Guyana that he has departed, finding little consolation in his flashbacks as he tries to come to terms with the equally bleak reality of his new existence, forsaken by his father and living in a London bedsit.
However, the narrator's innate intelligence and artistic curiosity presents a possible way out. As he tries to keep his head above the choppy waters of petty crime, sexual debauchery and lowlife drudgery, he slogs away at his studies, eyes always on the unlikely prize of a university education.
The star of the novel is its authentic London setting, which convincingly purveys the feeling of what it was like to be an underprivileged, street-level youth in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
While the book gladly tackles issues of race and class, it does so in a refreshingly down to earth and realistic manner, eschewing any temptation to look for heroes and villains.
An excellent novel which should have received more attention than it has.
Trying to come to terms with his semi-abandoned state in London, the novel's subject looks back with mixed emotions on the harsh life in Guyana that he has departed, finding little consolation in his flashbacks as he tries to come to terms with the equally bleak reality of his new existence, forsaken by his father and living in a London bedsit.
However, the narrator's innate intelligence and artistic curiosity presents a possible way out. As he tries to keep his head above the choppy waters of petty crime, sexual debauchery and lowlife drudgery, he slogs away at his studies, eyes always on the unlikely prize of a university education.
The star of the novel is its authentic London setting, which convincingly purveys the feeling of what it was like to be an underprivileged, street-level youth in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
While the book gladly tackles issues of race and class, it does so in a refreshingly down to earth and realistic manner, eschewing any temptation to look for heroes and villains.
An excellent novel which should have received more attention than it has.
February 10, 2019
Really enjoyed this. An immigrant story in the style of The Lonely Londoners, except more explicit and perhaps a bit more tragic
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September 8, 2025
I don’t think I like this book? The writing is good but kind of everywhere with the flashbacks and flashforwards. The narrator is also really unlikable.
September 9, 2025
"But you are fragrant, you are everything I intended."
February 8, 2017
I'm growing more fond of this book the more I go back to it for class and analyze what Dabydeen was doing with language as he wrote this. It's kind of remarkable and amazing how he makes illiterate characters so fascinated with traditional English and have insight that native speakers really can't get to. He turns our traditional English on its head and messes with it in ways that create meaning in ways I would never have thought of. I originally disliked this book when I started it, and I'm amazed by how much I keep going back to it now and loving what Dabydeen did with it.
May 10, 2016
A book about a West Indian boy who strives for a career in literature. His friends, however, develop differently, all trying to find themselves in between money, sex and poverty. Flashbacks of his childhood in Guayana provide a full picture of his upbringing so the reader can follow his journey. The book portrays several experiences of immigrant teenagers in the urban jungle that is London.
April 24, 2012
Meh. I felt like the plot was very...jumpy? Yes. And I guess I couldn't really plot things that well because I had too many questions about Joseph.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews