Empire is pivotal to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holme’s stories. India, South Africa, the Andaman Islands, Sierra Leone and of course Australia and New Zealand form a substantial part of his imaginary landscape. This is true, right from the beginning. In A Study in Scarlet, we are introduced to Dr Watson who took his degree of Doctor of Medicine from University of London in 1878. He joined the Northumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon and was stationed with his regiment in India as the second Afghan war broke out. He arrived In Bombay and then Candahar (sic). He served in Maiwand and was invalided out after being struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet. He was removed by packhorse to safety and landed in Peshawar where he was further struck down by dysentery.
Tag: books
Marquez’s Until August
Marquez’s Until August is about female infidelity. But it is also a love story. It is a special book because of its origin. It was written whilst Marquez was already losing his memory and as his children recount in the Preface, Marquez said ‘Memory is at once my source material and my tool. Without it, there’s nothing.’
Philip K Dick’s The Electric Ant
It is Dick's exploration of existential questions and the malleability of reality that I am concerned with in this blog. The short story “The Electric Ant” deals with what it means to be human and how the experiences of an android might differ, if at all, from that of a human being. Our protagonist Garson Poole wakes up in hospital to find that he is missing his right hand and that he feels no pain. This is the start of his discovery that he is not human, after all, but an android. It is in fact a horrible awakening



