The Drifters

Six young people from different countries meet in Spain and form an improvised community while travelling through Portugal, Morocco and Mozambique. Each is escaping a different pressure—military service, racial conflict, family expectations, political disillusionment or the consequences of personal choices—and their journeys become a search for a life outside conventional institutions.

Observed by the older banker George Fairbanks, the group debates the Vietnam War, drugs, colonialism, capitalism and generational revolt. The novel captures the freedoms and contradictions of the late 1960s, contrasting youthful mobility with the political violence and unequal societies through which the travellers move.