A Shadow of Myself

скачать книгу бесплатно

A Shadow of Myself
Mike Phillips

Major European-based thriller from Britain’s leading black crime novelist: ‘Hugely ambitious … this is also a splendid love story and a lesson in making crime fiction relevant’ Maxim Jakubowski, GuardianAttending a film festival in Prague, black documentary film maker Joseph Coker is approached by a complete stranger claiming to be his brother. George, who has been brought up in East Germany by his Russian mother, tells Joseph that they share the same father: Kofi Coker, a Ghanaian now living in London. Joseph’s reluctant acceptance of this relationship propels him into a nightmare world of intrigue and murder that threatens not just his identity, but his life.And behind the two sons is the enigmatic figure of Kofi himself, an idealistic African whose time in Kruschev’s Moscow led to betrayal and planted the seeds of tragedy in the next generation.Both thriller and love story, A Shadow of Myself is set against the backdrop of post-Cold War Europe, exploring the impact of the Third World on its future. Gripping and moving, it follows its characters from the fifties to the present day, as they move between the clashing ideologies of East and West.

MIKE PHILLIPS

A SHADOW OF MYSELF

Copyright (#ulink_187a6d1a-02f8-50af-b1ac-2c8bf65867aa)

HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

This edition 2001

First published in Great Britain by Collins Crime 2000

Copyright © Mike Phillips 2000

Mike Phillips asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780006511977

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007400362

Version: 2016-01-04

Dedication (#ulink_7cad2dab-fee6-5cfc-b7b0-ded386885c7b)

For Jenny, Kip and Kwesi

In memory of Ronald Ivor Phillips

With gratitude to the Arts Foundation for its support and to John Akomfrah, and David Upshal for the vital sparks,

and with heartfelt thanks to Tereza Brdeckova, Trevor Carter, Grigory Chartishvili, Daria Chrin, Sacha Dugdale, William Elliott, Masha Gessen, Henri Jansova, Maria Kozlovskaya, Yelena Krishtof, Julia Latynina, Milada Novakova, Martina Moravcová, Kevin O’Flynn, Sergeant Stiina Rajala, as well as all the others who so generously contributed their memories and experiences … and last but not least, Radka, for lending me her name.

Epigraph (#ulink_5d0b6d28-ee5d-5e9f-89a1-4120b14e973a)

Then I told him to let me go away from their church and I do not want to marry again, because I could not bear to be baptised with fire and hot water any longer, but when all of them heard so, they shouted, ‘Since you have entered this church you are to be baptised with fire and hot water before you will get out of the church, willing or not you ought to wait and complete the baptism.’ But when I heard so from them again, I exclaimed with a terrible voice that, ‘I will die in their church.’ So all of them exclaimed again that, ‘You may die if you like, nobody knows you here.’

AMOS TUTUOLA – My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts

The whole people in the village saw us but as we were strange to them although they recognised us, they gathered together and were following us with wonder. They were also shouting on us as they were following us: ‘Why the moneys you bring from your journey are nearly to kill you? Why? Are these lumps of iron which you carry now the moneys you bring? Wonderful.’ It was like that the whole people of the village were making mockery of us.

AMOS TUTUOLA – Ajaiyi And His Inherited Poverty

… it is not that I would forbid the making of statues, shaped in marble or bronze, but that as the human face, so is its copy, futile and perishing, while the form of the mind is eternal, to be expressed, not through the alien medium of art and its material, but severally by each man in the fashion of his own life.

TACITUS – from the Epilogue of Agricola

Contents

Cover (#ua3c8b3bb-a793-598b-9fb4-aa787114effb)

Title Page (#u6c24dd32-7d10-5367-aebe-2aedf52c265b)

Copyright (#ub280f185-1638-5850-b9a1-04c8dac97601)

Dedication (#u102776e7-6d4d-5c73-a12e-7e2d400dbdc6)

Epigraph (#u72a1a6a9-bf1a-57a8-a432-6159639b1789)

Hamburg (#u2168177e-22b8-5916-bd7e-447f8fcf75b8)

One (#uc74a07bd-77a7-53d8-b4e0-62fc812ce158)

Prague (#u64a598b1-813e-5922-a0d9-ede3431c3910)

Two (#udddf5046-931d-550c-8d69-114ad7dca9c3)

Three (#uc3d06ab4-1ace-54a6-95de-357696994945)

Four (#uc66b3812-b182-5abc-8eea-5ca6c1797c1a)

Five (#uceee6d4e-35cd-568b-8c46-1afbb8c9f027)

Six (#u2d645acb-bfa7-502c-b06a-6f4b263a5fc7)

Seven (#ubd609161-b632-54ea-9cd1-1e2619d59e40)

Eight (#ufe69e7a7-951f-5571-86dd-eb0812c01094)

London (#ud78cb36c-6ac2-51a9-b0bd-dac4655406ee)

Nine (#uecb3e643-9d97-5332-b84c-c25c83c1c859)

Ten (#u9359d613-3d4d-5bc9-acfd-319428ea9a76)

Eleven (#u8f2589cb-3589-5f40-bc79-b84e8a566c6c)

Twelve (#uecd0da4f-d368-5b3c-99ea-450f737c0f88)

Thirteen (#u7be1a5fe-7232-5a15-b5dd-9532c10086b4)

Prague (#u53f9ca37-dc33-565a-8cc2-352824a163fb)

Fourteen (#u0cf3e772-c5b8-585c-a498-608db353134b)

London (#uf9c3e1a2-4aa3-5d31-8500-340549d5df2a)

Fifteen (#u5d52c72c-6a5b-5126-9160-e998d1156c17)

Sixteen (#u6aef48c0-d580-587b-8278-ae9f1196bf1e)

Berlin (#u98571e6a-6f3d-555d-9cf4-c83079acb535)

Seventeen (#ua3f7401a-97e3-5c29-8dea-45446a5b7691)

Eighteen (#ud35ec515-062a-592d-aed0-6337f47ecc3b)

Nineteen (#ue0ac3dc6-f706-5960-bc21-2c041c9151c8)

Twenty (#u908cabd1-27d1-53aa-85a7-818a2768061c)

Twenty-One (#u8322a248-8c3b-5ddd-9549-cdae63116e26)

Twenty-Two (#ue85dd33e-93aa-5155-9fdc-5a57412cfe06)

Twenty-Three (#uee730bb2-ba78-51b3-8701-454521a48e0c)

Twenty-Four (#u68e42de8-5e0f-550f-a334-46153291e2cc)

Twenty-Five (#u029db7e1-32ac-5bf0-bf9d-97a6fd4e35fc)

Twenty-Six (#ub304df94-de0c-535e-a168-a22a4aaaffa7)

Twenty-Seven (#ua88b1d83-ac36-5ca2-95d2-f32d9b0e9acb)

Twenty-Eight (#u480b6ce2-0e6c-545b-8a92-2a1148ce38cc)

Twenty-Nine (#ue139b0e1-2f2b-5e72-841d-1bd0c6c3e35b)

Thirty (#u544c61f5-903c-5376-a639-abf853c3cb81)

Thirty-One (#ude03a71a-b707-5fab-8a0a-a8b1cc364a48)

Thirty-Two (#u531179b8-6c70-50a8-a891-c553b7055a3a)

About the Author (#u0721834f-a164-52e0-bdf6-7da484ee52f4)

Also by the Author (#ud4b719a8-57b8-5eb1-b9ab-f703009211ac)

About the Publisher (#uaf8b2246-6ff0-5911-b1d0-fc5d0a798606)

Hamburg (#ulink_0e388dd6-41a0-5c56-9398-a3e02159c938)

September 1998