The Undiscovered Country
The Undiscovered Country, a “wonderfully intelligent” collection of diverse essays on literary, artistic, and political topics by Trinidadian Andre Bagoo, “is full of insights and surprises,” according to the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize judges.
These Ghosts Are Family
These Ghosts Are Family, 2021 OCM Bocas Prize Fiction Winner and the first book by US-based Jamaican Maisy Card, portrays a family and its entanglements over multiple generations. “At its heart,” said the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize judges, “is the story of Caribbean enslavement and the legacy of trauma it has passed down from generation to […]
The Dyzgraphxst
The Dyzgraphxst, the second book by Canada-based St. Lucian Canisia Lubrin and overall winner of the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize, was described by 2021 OCM Bocas Prize judges as “a journey where meaning is often an unpaved road, but the ride is richly satisfying…. Reading this collection makes you hold your breath and dive to the ocean-floor […]
Angel
Merle Collins’ first novel parallels the coming of age of its female protagonist, Angel, whose university education exposes her to the ideas of Black Power and radical decolonisation, and the turbulent years of 1951 to 1983 during Grenada’s thrust for political self-determination. “The novel affirms a sustained tradition of suffering and struggle and creativity that […]
Feeding the Ghosts
This suspenseful historical fiction is the third novel of British-Guyanese poet, novelist and playwright Fred D’Aguiar. Inspired by true events, the book chronicles Mintah, a survivor of the noyade on the slave ship Zong, who spurs her fellow captives to rebellion. “D’Aguiar’s imagery is haunting, his characters’ thoughts complex and the mood is darkly compelling.”
The Children of Sisyphus
Orlando Patterson’s first novel was inspired by existentialist Albert Camus, and is the “brutally poetic” portrayal of Jamaica’s Rastafarian community that depicts the lives of those trapped in the poverty, crime, and religious extremism of the slums of Kingston. “The introduction by Kwame Dawes notes, amongst other things, how long before reggae became a […]
Beka Lamb
The debut novel from Zee Edgell observes a short time in the life of 14-year-old Beka Lamb in the context of the shifting social and cultural environment of Belize at the end of British colonial rule.
Another Life
In this autobiography in verse, Walcott’s longest and most ambitious poem, he “reaches beyond an evocative portrayal of his native West Indies to create a moving elegy on himself and on man.”
My Mother Who Fathered Me: A Study of the Family in Three Selected Communities in Jamaica
Edith Clarke’s groundbreaking anthropological study on Jamaican family patterns has been highly influential in Caribbean Studies for decades.
How to Escape from a Leper Colony: A Novella and Stories
The debut collection of stories by Tiphanie Yanique, set mostly in the US Virgin Islands. Part oral history, part postcolonial narrative, How to Escape from a Leper Colony is ultimately a loving portrait of a wholly unique place.
Going Home to Teach
“Winkler’s account of the year spent in Jamaica teaching at a rural teacher training college is a rich combination of autobiography and incisive social commentary, with a wealth of material including contrasts between the American and Jamaican outlooks, insights into the dilemma of being a member of a privileged minority, and lessons about the perils […]
Collected Poems, 1937-1989
Collected Poems by A.J. Seymour from 1937-1989 is a collection of published and unpublished works by the late A.J. Seymour, edited by Ian McDonald and J. de Weever.
Minty Alley
The only novel from one of the twentieth century’s greatest Caribbean thinkers – this extraordinary, big-hearted exploration of class was the first novel by a black West Indian to be published in the UK. Minty Alley is a gloriously observed portrayal of class, community and the ways in which we are all inherently connected. Re-published in 2021 as part […]
Christopher
Set in Barbados, the novel follows a young boy named Christopher, home for the school holidays at his family’s stately plantation house. “Its depiction of a lost world of white colonial life, as well as its sensitive portrayal of the pains and pleasures of growing up, give it an enduring value. If, on the one […]
Antes que Anochezca (Before Night Falls)
The autobiography of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, describing his early life in Cuba, his time in prison, and his escape to the United States in 1980. Born to a poverty-stricken family in rural Cuba, by the time of his death in New York four decades later, he had become one of Cuba’s most important poets, an […]
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.
The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey Or, Africa for Africans
A Jamaican living in the US, Marcus Garvey advanced a Pan-African philosophy which inspired a global movement, known as Garveyism. This book, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (1923) was compiled by his wife, Amy Euphemia Jacques Garvey, mainly from his speeches.
Les Damnés de la Terre (The Wretched of the Earth)
The work that established Fanon as a leading intellectual in the international decolonization movement.
Reel from “The Life-Movie”
McNeill’s second poetry collection Reel from ‘The Life Movie’ (1972) established his reputation as one of the most promising Jamaican poets of his generation.
Moon on a Rainbow Shawl
Moon on a Rainbow Shawl is a play by Trinidadian actor, playwright and director Errol John. It centres on a group of characters living close to the poverty line in a shared tenement yard in Port of Spain, Trinidad.
A Portable Paradise
Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2020 and the RSL Ondaatje Prize, these are finely crafted poems reveal Roger Robinson’s capacity to tell involving stories and capture the essence of a character in a few words, to move the emotions with the force of verbal expression, and engage our thoughts, as in the sequence of […]
Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting
In Shivanee Ramlochan’s first collection of poems, Trinidad and Caribbean poetry finds an exciting new voice, one that displays a sharp intelligence, and iconoclastic spirit and fertility of imagination.
Measures of Expatriation
Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection and Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize (2016). In Measures of Expatriation Vahni Capildeo’s poems and prose-poems speak of the complex alienation of the expatriate, and address wider issues around identity in contemporary Western society
A Long Way from Home
A Jamaican-born author of poetry, short stories, novels, and nonfiction, McKay has often been associated with the “New Negro” or Harlem Renaissance, a movement of African American art, culture, and intellectualism between World War I and the Great Depression. But his relationship to the movement was complex. In his 1937 autobiography, A Long Way from Home, McKay explains […]
Small Island
Small Island by bestselling author Andrea Levy won the Orange Prize for Fiction, as well as the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Whitbread. It has been called the definitive fictional account of the experiences of the Empire Windrush generation (Headline Publisher Group).
The Star-Apple Kingdom
Most of the poems in this collection follow the arc of the Caribbean archipelago from Trinidad to Jamaica. The reader is taken on an odyssey, beginning with “The Schooner Flight,” in which a poor mulatto sailor abandons his life in Trinidad, sailing northward to meet his fate, and ending with “The Star-Apple Kingdom,” a long poem […]
Drumblair: Memories of a Jamaican Childhood
Rachel Manley, granddaughter and daughter of two of Jamaica’s national leaders, tells the story of the brilliant and artistic Manleys, Jamaica’s most prominent and glamorous political family, and the house in which they lived, Drumblair.
Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal
In Dying to Better Themselves, Olive Senior examines the neglected post-emancipation generation of the 1850s who were lured to Panama by the promise of lucrative work and who initiated a pattern of circular migration that would transform the islands economically, socially and politically well into the twentieth century.
Redemption in Indigo
Karen Lord’s debut novel, which won the prestigious Frank Collymore Literary Prize in Barbados, is an intricately woven tale of adventure, magic, and the power of the human spirit.
Crossing the River
Crossing the River is a historical novel that explores the abandonment and misery of slavery.