One of the positives of The Colony that emerges fairly early on is that the main character Sabir is not over bearing leaving you to wonder as a reader what you would do in similar circumstances.
As he befriends and takes advantage of the heavy drinking and idealist warden that hje is building a garden for he dreams of escape. But with these things so prone to failure should he sit things out and enjoy the reasonably good life that he has been able to attain in captivity?
Making that decision harder is the experience of one escapee who turns up in the middle of the night to make life difficult for Sabir. If this apparent escape specialist can find it difficult getting off the island then surely the same will be the case for Sabir.
But as more of the back story is filled in this also becomes a question about the individual and the reaction to war. As Sabir remembers the trenches was he not also a prisoner in a way part of a colony of men and machines? That thought starts to fill the mind.
More soon...
