Word: cafard
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...things fall apart-both literally and figuratively. The piano sinks through the termite-ridden floor, the chandelier is unlit, the glasses are broken, the cattle die of foot-and-mouth disease, and one of the lions is decapitated by one of the characters in a fit of rage. Colonial cafard-suffocating apathy-has set in. Nevertheless, Archie keeps up the forms of the sahib-settler's life. It is a gruesome parody of colonial ritual. There is tennis every afternoon with his daughter, after which they sit for the "sundowner" before dinner, served by a "boy" in a sashed...