A Scream in the Shadows
A Scream in the Shadows (Papillote Press), a new crime novel by St. Lucian writer Mac Donald Dixon, uses the conventions of the detective novel to explore questions of contemporary violence and corruption in a small Caribbean island. After a young girl is murdered in a rural village, her stepfather is arrested for the crime […]
Haitian Revolutionary Fictions
Haitian Revolutionary Fictions: An Anthology (University of Virginia Press), edited by Marlene L Daut, Grégory Pierrot, and Marion C. Rohrleitner, is a groundbreaking collection of 18th- and 19th-century fiction, poetry, and drama inspired by the Haitian Revolution. Two hundred excerpts, from texts originally written in multiple languages, show how generations of writers tackled the themes […]
The Disordered Cosmos
A Fierce Green Place
A Fierce Green Place: New and Selected Poems (New Directions), a collection of “rebellious, innovative” poems by Canada-based Jamaican Pamela Mordecai, spans her three-decade literary career, covering subjects as diverse as Biblical and colonial history, family tragedy, and the defiance of vernacular Caribbean culture.
A Revolutionary for Our Time
A Revolutionary for Our Time: The Walter Rodney Story (Haymarket), by Leo Zeilig, the first book-length study of the groundbreaking Guyanese scholar and activist, explores Rodney’s life and research, thought and revolutionary action, and his significance for today’s political struggles.
Black American Refugee
Black American Refugee: Escaping the Narcissism of the American Dream (Viking), a deeply introspective memoir by T&T-born, US-raised Tiffanie Drayton, returning to Tobago as an adult. The author uses personal experiences to investigate the toll of systemic racism and what the “American Dream” might actually mean for Black people.
Border Zone
Border Zone (Bloodaxe), the ninth poetry collection by Guyana-born John Agard, ranges across centuries and oceans. It includes a verse love story about a Barbadian photographer and a Welsh librarian, a Cassanova-inspired sequence of sonnets, poems exploring the calypso form, and poems tackling COVID lockdown.
Devotion
Devotion (Bloomsbury), a novel by Trinidadian Kevin Jared Hosein, winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, is a gripping noir tale set in 1940s Trinidad, investigating the “hellishly intertwined” stories of two families connected by mysterious acts of violence.
Hurricane Watch
Hurricane Watch: New and Collected Poems (Carcanet Press), a new volume by Jamaican Poet Laureate Olive Senior, brings together her four previous books of poems — Talking of Trees, Gardening in the Tropics, Over the Roofs of the World, and Shell — with a sequence of new work.
Living on Islands Not Found on Maps
Living on Islands Not Found on Maps (FlowerSong Press), a new collection of poems by Luivette Resto, born in Puerto Rico and based in the US. Childhood, motherhood, memory, desire, love, and revolution collide in these poems that combine candour with lyrical craft.
Love the Dark Days
Love the Dark Days (Peepal Tree Press), a “fearless” memoir by India-born, Trinidad-based journalist Ira Mathur, reflects on family history, the struggle to adapt to a new life in the multi-ethnic Caribbean, the author’s development as a journalist, and her relationship with Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott.
Moon Witch, Spider King
Moon Witch, Spider King (Riverhead), the second volume in the Dark Star Trilogy by Jamaican Marlon James, gives an alternative account of the events told in its predecessor Black Leopard, Red Wolf, this time from the perspective of Sogolon the Moon Witch.
Neruda on the Park
Neruda on the Park (Ballantyne), the debut novel by Dominican-American Cleyvis Natera tells the story of the Dominican-American Guerrero family grappling with issues of community and ambition, and pulling in plotlines concerning both romance and neighbourhood gentrification in New York City.
Song of My Softening
Song of My Softening (Alice James Books), the debut collection by UK-born, Trinidadian-Nigerian-American Omotara James, explores love and sexuality, friendship and sisterhood through daring, innovative lyrics that “remind us of our physical and sensual selves.”
The Dreaming
The Dreaming (Peepal Tree Press), a short story collection by Trinidadian Andre Bagoo, his first book of fiction after several volumes of poems and a celebrated essay collection. Set mostly in the Port of Spain neighbourhood of Woodbrook, these stories explore the lives and loves of a group of gay men, with wit, psychological insight, […]
The Drowned Forest
The Drowned Forest (Peepal Tree Press), a novel by Bermudan Angela Barry, tackles culture clashes and climate change in the evolving social order of Bermuda, told through the vividly realised voices of five different characters.
The Mystic Masseur’s Wife
The Mystic Masseur’s Wife (Peepal Tree Press), the debut novel by Trinidadian Vijay Maharaj, is an “inventive, richly humorous” re-writing of V.S. Naipaul’s early novel The Mystic Masseur, focused on Leila, the wife of Naipaul’s protagonist, finally giving her side of the story.
The Stranger Who Was Myself
The Stranger Who Was Myself (Peepal Tree Press), a memoir by fiction writer Barbara Jenkins, ranges from her childhood in colonial Trinidad to her university education in Wales and her return to her newly independent home country to make a life and raise a family — all told with “an insider/outsider sharpness of perception.”
Unstitching Silence
Submissions are invited for the forthcoming anthology Unstitching Silence: Fiction and Poetry by Caribbean Writers on Gender-Based Violence, to be co-edited by Shivanee Ramlochan and Lucy Evans, and published by Peekash Press in 2023. Writers of Caribbean birth or citizenship may submit previously unpublished work for consideration, and selected writers will have the opportunity to […]
Uprooting
Winner of the 2021 Nan Shepherd Prize, established to celebrate underrepresented voices in nature writing, Uprooting (Canongate Books) by Marchelle Farrell is a debut non-fiction ode to an English countryside garden. Farrell, a Trinidadian therapist, describes her move to the UK, to an idyllic town in which she was the only Black woman. Her ensuing […]
What a Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You
What a Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You (Virago), the debut novel by Jamaican Sharma Taylor, begins with an eighteen-year-old Jamaican woman giving her newborn son up for adoption — setting off a decades-long story of family, identity, and inheritance, vividly set in contemporary Jamaica.
When We Were Birds
When We Were Birds (Hamish Hamilton, UK; Doubleday, US), perhaps the most hotly anticipated Caribbean debut of 2022, by UK-based Trinidadian Ayanna Lloyd Banwo — a “mesmerising” story of love, family, and destiny set in the fictional city of Port Angeles.
In Nearby Bushes
Over the Roofs of the World
Shell
Talking of Trees
The Mystic Masseur
Within the Law
José Martí
José Martí: A Revolutionary Life (University of Texas Press), by Alfred J. López, is the first major biography of the Cuban writer and national hero to be published in English. A revolutionary and political thinker, Martí (1853–1895) is revered today as an “apostle of freedom” both in Cuba and in Cuban exile communities. Drawing on […]
To Love an Island
To Love an Island (YesYes Books), the debut book of poems by US-born, Puerto Rico–raised Ana Portnoy Brimmer, “offers the stark recognition that disaster is political and colonialism the most violent of storms.” Ranging over recent historical events from Hurricane Maria to widespread political protests in Puerto Rico in 2019, the poems explore grief and […]