THE NIGHT OF THE RAMBLER

A rich and enthralling novel by a young German-Venezuelan author in the tradition of Junot Díaz, offering an absurdist look into a small nation’s struggle for independence.

A sympathetic and often humorous account of an obscure episode in the history of the remote island of Anguilla, in the northeast Caribbean, The Night of the Rambler revolves around a haphazard attempt by a dozen or so locals to invade neighboring St. Kitts in an effort to topple the government of the recently established Associated State of St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla. Ostensibly, the action maps the fifteen hours that lapse between the moment when the "rebels" board The Rambler, the thirty-five-foot motorboat that will take them across the strait to St. Kitts, and the break of dawn the following day, when it becomes obvious that the unaccomplished mission will have to be aborted.

The novel is at turns highly dramatic and hilarious, all the while bringing deep honesty to the often-unexamined righteousness of revolution. With echoes of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Mario Vargas Llosa's Conversation in the Cathedral, the novel presents an intricate pattern of subtly related anecdotes woven together by a handful of rich and complex characters.

Montague Kobbé was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and for the past decade has resided at different times in Bristol, Leeds, London, and Munich. He has had close ties to the Caribbean island of Anguilla, the setting for his debut novel, for over twenty-five years. He maintains a regular literary column in the WEEKender supplement of Sint Maarten's Daily Herald and his work has been published in Anguilla, Antigua, Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina, Venezuela, Spain, and the United Kingdom.