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Mangals

By Korman, Chris

Book Id: WPLBN0004450890
Format Type: PDF (eBook)
File Size: 982.32 KB.
Reproduction Date: 6/29/2016

Title:	Mangals
Author:	Korman, Chris
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Fiction, Romance, Erotic Fantasy
Collections:	Authors Community, Most Popular Books in China, Favorites in India
Historic Publication Date:	2016
Publisher:	Self-published

Member Page:	christophe Kormann
Citation APA MLA Chicago Korman, C. (2016). Mangals. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.us/

Description
The story is a waking dream, in which the main protagonist, Thomas (Tom) Herman will be carried away in a whirlpool of events that will reveal his true identity

Summary
Thomas Hermann is a disorientated young man in his early twenties. He travels to a Far-East island on a strange errand, to meet his estranged father, whom he last saw when he was a little child. His journey into the unknown turns into a quest for identity, revealing his sexuality and unquenchable thirst for love and belonging, amidst a series of events over which he has little control.

Excerpt
The arrival Then the heat hit him like an inescapable steamy landslide. Thick, heavy and sweltering. He had to gasp. 'Oh my! Oh my!' he exclaimed, choking, as it dawned on him that this would be his world from then on. The smell of hot humid air, as if he were stepping into a sauna bath, suffocated him. He could feel the film of moisture spreading over his back snake-like, soaking his shirt, enfolding his body. Feeling dizzy after eighteen hours in the cold air-conditioned atmosphere of the cabin he walked out of the plane into that shockingly new reality. That peculiar smell wouldn't leave thenceforth. In time he would get used to it. He had to steady himself. The first people he saw were soldiers, armed to the teeth and edgy in the gangway, swarming all over the airport in fact. It was just a few days after the assassination. The opposition leader back from his political exile shot point blank on the tarmac. Martial law, unrest, arrests and curfew. Not the best of times to come. But then he hadn't really had a choice. Or had he? Anyway there was no turning back now. The in-flight film: Apocalypse Now, didn't help to cheer him up. On the contrary, it added a little more dread to his first steps in this unknown country. South-East Asia. The land of Europe's darkest fantasies. He was coming here on a strange errand. Sent for by his estranged father, a man he hardly knew. He only had vague childhood memories, probably made up from washed out snapshots in the family album and the few stories his mother had told him and then had stopped telling him. An overzealous pock-marked customs officer was inspecting his suitcase, looking for what? He wondered. He was leafing through the documents it contained, the said family album, his family record book, birth certificates, a certified family tree reaching back to the eighteenth century- what on earth did André need all this for?- He hadn't told him anything. A terse letter, scribbled half-hearted sympathies for the loss of his mother, and that inept request for these papers. What's more he had wanted him to sell their family house and bring as much cash with him as he could. This is where he stood now. At first he had been stunned by the letter, then, revolted, had thrown it away, only to retrieve it from the trash can a few days later and ponder over it, intrigued. What could it all mean? What did André have in mind? His mother's death had deeply grieved him and left him numb and dismayed. She had been his main landmark while growing up, through thick and thin, beyond their bickering and later fights. Her fight against the crab. The chemio, the false hopes of remission and the horrendous, emaciating, ineluctable life-sucking descent into the final days had been a nightmare he still couldn't shake off, try as he may. So, at least, here was something for him to do, not like someone reaching out to him, but something to hold on to, sort of. After all what was holding him back? An only child, he had no close family left. Louise, his girlfriend had walked out on him a few months before. Another loss. Another rejection. Louise, sweet Louise, wild and cruel Louise. Louise brooked, had brooked no weakness, and he had been faint-hearted... Yet she had opened a whole new world of emotions to him. He had loved her body and soul. At times exuberant to a fault, at times withdrawn, at war with her own demons, she had been inaccessible no matter how much he had reached out to her. Sure he had agreed to their unwritten covenant of free love and had played along at first, willing himself to suffer her other lovers, while trying hard to love others himself, to put up a front really, for his heart hadn't been in it. It had seemed to work out for a while, but his love for her had been so passionate, so intense, so overwhelming, that the green poison of jealousy had seeped into his heart and soon he hadn't been able take it anymore. She had been his everything and he had failed her. He hadn't been up to the challenge, had been no match for her ebullience. That was his fault. Eventually he hadn't felt loved in return though she professed to the contrary. So they had drifted apart, slowly but surely. For months he had lived in limbo, a lost soul, a shadow among the living. The last he'd heard of her she had changed her name for Mina and had hooked up with a scenic designer. Then he had chosen exile, had preferred escape to a life of suffering and self-loathing, watching her in other people's arms. He had dropped out of college and enrolled in the navy, burying his love for her in the deepest recess of his heart, putting a concrete lid on it and hoping time would heal his pain...

Table of Contents
Contents 1. The arrival 2. The old fort, Tom meets Ishmael 3. At the harbor 4. At the pawnshop 5. Upstream in the mangal 6. Mangal 7. Tom meets his father 8. They sail out to Palawasi. 9. The attack 10. The blast 11. The storm 12 Muddy waters 13. Tom's musings 14. Free-diving 15. Jun's story 16. Yellow Sony walkman 17. Dream of sperm whales 18. The rescue 19. Jun leaves on the Ymob Kid 20. Maya 21. The blue hole 22. Blind cigarette vendor 23. They are married 24 Mohal Bohal 25. About the author