Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard (1995), Timothy Mo’s
fifth novel, is also the first to be published by his own press,
Paddleless Press. Set in the Philippines, the novel is divided into
two parts, bracketed by a Prologue and Epilogue. The controversial
Prologue describes a sexual encounter between a German professor,
Detlef Pfeidwengeler, and a Filipina prostitute in which, among
other graphic details, he climaxes as she defecates on him. This
coprophiliac Prologue was supposedly one of the reasons why several
publishing houses reacted unfavourably to the manuscript. Mo
refused to change it because he saw it as an act of censorship, and
decided to set up his own publishing venture.
The first part of the …
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