alfway through Paul Harding’s latest novel, a reporter, a photographer, two doctors and three local councillors visit an isolated island somewhere along the coast of Maine. They travel there as part of an official survey committee, escorted by a white missionary, Matthew Diamond, who wants to teach Latin and Shakespeare to the island’s racially diverse residents but also feels a “visceral, involuntary repulsion … in the presence of a living Negro”. The story is set in the early-20th century US, when anti-black prejudices
