Fortune
Eddie Wade has recently returned from the US oilfields. He is determined to sink his own well and make his fortune in the 1920s Trinidad oil-rush. His sights are set on Sonny Chatterjee’s failing cocoa estate, Kushi, where the ground is so full of oil you can put a stick in the ground and see it bubble up. When a fortuitous meeting with businessman Tito Fernandez brings Eddie the investor he desperately needs, the three men enter into a partnership. A friendship between Tito and Eddie begins that will change their lives forever, not least when the oil starts gushing. But their partnership also brings Eddie into contact with Ada, Tito’s beautiful wife, and as much as they try, they cannot avoid the attraction they feel for each other.
Fortune, based on true events, catches Trinidad at a moment of historical change whose consequences reverberate down to present concerns with climate change and environmental destruction. As a story of love and ambition, its focus is on individuals so enmeshed in their desires that they blindly enter the territory of classic Greek tragedy where actions always have consequences.
Praise
'Don't even read the synopsis, dive right in; Fortune is a read that rustles, breathes, takes you by its sultry hand and doesn't let you go.'
DBC Pierre
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A thrilling, gripping, moving book about love, desire, and making something of ones life set in the lush tropical beauty of Trinidad in the 1920s, Fortune is going to hold you in its thrall from the very first page to the last and not let you go long, long after youve put it down. Its also written in some of the most beautifully lyrical and clear prose Ive read in a very long time.
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A thriller, a page turner, an adventure story and a tense love story all in one. I couldn’t put it down. Fortune is a master work of Caribbean literature and a book which will stay with me for a long time. Smyth, here, is writing at the top other game.
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Intimate and extraordinary, beautiful and brutal, this master storyteller brings alive the lost world of 1920s Trinidad in an ageless parable of fate and desire.
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Like a fossil you might unearth in the sediment of south Trinidad, Amanda Smyth’s Fortune is a glimpse of a bygone world in which patterns echo warnings: after oil comes trouble, after joy comes sorrow, what is right can also be wrong. With remarkable economy, the complexities of oil prospecting, the human heart, and the natural world are distilled into a compelling narrative that gushes forward.
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A writer has to be at the highest of her power to slip so comfortably, so beautifully into the skin of history and let it breathe like this.
Jane Harris
‘Fortune is a sexy, steamy infinitely subtle novel. Like all the best literature, it takes a big canvas and yet foregrounds a small set of characters in order to create a page turning narrative.’
Reviews
My life in books: DBC Pierre
Written by DBC Pierre for Irish Independent on Sunday, April 17, 2022
Fortune by Amanda Smyth [...] is just so beautifully detailed that you forget that you're not living it yourself.
A novel with the momentum and power of a Greek tragedy
Paul Murray for The Irish Times on Saturday, October 16, 2021
Though her characters burn with passion, greed, desperation, the dreamlike quality of Smyth’s prose gives them the feel of sleepwalkers, blindly drawn to their doom. That inescapable sense of fate slowly builds throughout the novel, giving this brilliant reimagining of real events – the Dome Fire of 1928 in which 17 people were killed – the momentum and power of a Greek tragedy.
'Fortune is a fascinating portrait of Trinidad, an island that is beautiful but poor, troubled and full of danger. Amanda Smyth builds the love-triangle tension with patient skill.' - The Times
Passion and greed in the Caribbean
Amanda Craig for The Guardian on Wednesday, July 14, 2021
Based on a real-life tragedy, Fortune is a magnificently absorbing tale of passion, greed and the misplaced energies that cause environmental as well as personal ruin.
Alternate Covers
Original Cover
Walter Scott Prize Cover