The Master of Chaos
The Master of Chaos (Sandstone Press), a new collection of short fiction by Guyana-born, UK-based Pauline Melville, is described by Salman Rushdie as “a virtuoso performance.” Diverse in subject and setting — ranging from Guyana to Russia, Syria to Argentina — the stories are linked by Melville’s characteristic dark humour, and her interest in how […]
The Snow Line
The Snow Line (Scribe UK), the latest novel by Guyana-born, UK-based Tessa McWatt (a past winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for non-fiction), meditates on difference and affinity, love and ageing, through the story of four strangers from various countries and backgrounds who meet at a wedding in India. Unlikely friendships ensue, and soon the […]
Year of Plagues
Year of Plagues: A Memoir of 2020 (Carcanet), by the Guyanese-British novelist and poet Fred D’Aguiar, recounts interweaving stories of crisis, personal and collective. Within the space of a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic upended ordinary life across the globe, Black Lives Matter protests electrified the United States in a presidential election year, the state […]
A New Orthography
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 […]
Blood Like Magic
Blood Like Magic (Margaret K. McElderry Books) is the debut book by Trinidadian-Canadian author Liselle Sambury. The main character Voya Thomas is a 16-year-old Black Canadian girl with Trinidadian roots—and a fledgling witch. Kirkus Reviews gave it a starred review, calling it a “breath of fresh air for the genre; readers will be spellbound. (Fantasy. […]
Simone Breaks All the Rules
Simone Breaks All the Rules (Scholastic), a new YA rom-com by bestselling Haitian-American writer Debbie Rigaud, follows teenager Simone as she tries to break free from the “boy-proof container” that her strict Haitian parents have set around her life. “Perfect for fans of Netflix’s Never Have I Ever and You Should See Me in a […]
The Shape of That Hurt
The Shape of That Hurt (Peepal Tree), a groundbreaking collection of essays by the eminent literary scholar Gordon Rohlehr, has been returned to print nearly three decades after its original publication, now part of the Peepal Tree Press Caribbean Modern Classics series. Taking its title from a poem by the late Jamaican writer Anthony McNeill, […]
Hurricane Child
Easily Fooled
Easily Fooled (Guernica Editions), the latest novel by St. Vincent-born, Canada-based writer H. Nigel Thomas, is the third in his “No Safeguards” quartet. Millington, a gay Vincentian and former Methodist minister, had migrated to Canada, where he now lives with his husband Jay — who he fears is about to depart. “He thought he’d resolved […]
This Other Island
In This Other Island (Bookouture), a novel by St. Lucia-born Steffanie Edward published electronically, Yvette is reconnected with her estranged father Joe, who migrated to Britain as part of the Windrush generation. Trying to make peace with their past, Yvette learns of dark secrets in her family history that destroyed her parents’ marriage, and now […]
Witness in Stone
Witness in Stone (Peepal Tree), the latest collection by Barbados Poet Laureate Esther Phillips, “explores the fragile territory between remembering and forgetting, both as an individual experience and in the life of a society.” “Phillips’ poems are always lucid and musical,” writes the publisher. “They gain a rewarding complexity from being part of the collection’s […]
The Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists
Pleasantview
Pleasantview (Ig Publishing), the debut book by Trinidadian Celeste Mohammed, is a “novel in stories” set in a fictional town in south Trinidad, its carefully woven plotlines revealing unexpected connections among its inhabitants. Along the way, it unsparingly holds up a mirror to contemporary T&T and its complicated, often troubling relations of gender, ethnicity, and […]
The Errors of the Rendering
The Illustrated Story of Pan
Anansi and the Book of Night
Anansi and the Book of Night (Passion Fruit Publishing) by Rubadiri Victor is the second novel in a planned seven-book series. Based on traditional folklore, the fantasy series includes original illustrations by the author. The latest installment is conceived as a detective story featuring characters drawn from the animal kingdom.
Letters Home
The newly launched Caribbean Contemporary Classics series from Hodder Education, aimed at younger readers, was launched with familiar titles such as the novels Green Days by the River by Michael Anthony, The Young Warriors by V.S. Reid, and Letters Home by Paulette Ramsay, and the anthology The Sun’s Eye, edited by Anne Walmsley.
The Sun’s Eye
The newly launched Caribbean Contemporary Classics series from Hodder Education, aimed at younger readers, was launched with familiar titles such as the novels Green Days by the River by Michael Anthony, The Young Warriors by V.S. Reid, and Letters Home by Paulette Ramsay, and the anthology The Sun’s Eye, edited by Anne Walmsley.
The Young Warriors
The newly launched Caribbean Contemporary Classics series from Hodder Education, aimed at younger readers, was launched with familiar titles such as the novels Green Days by the River by Michael Anthony, The Young Warriors by V.S. Reid, and Letters Home by Paulette Ramsay, and the anthology The Sun’s Eye, edited by Anne Walmsley.
Zion Roses
Zion Roses (Peepal Tree Press) is the second book of poems by Jamaican Monica Minott. The publisher describes the collection as “a constant dialogue between four quadrants of engagement: with history, with landscape, with personal and family experience, and with the worlds of literature, music and art. Minott’s sense of history is deeply informed by […]
You Have You Father Hard Head
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 […]
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.”
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.
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 […]
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.”
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 […]