He Burns by the River
He Burns by the River (Augustine Books) by Khalia Moreau is a young adult folkloric adventure set in Trinidad’s 1960s, retelling the Biblical tale of Cain and Abel through two youths coming of age in a fraught time. The bond between Roran and his older, fair-skinned brother Danny are beset by ambition and colourism: this […]
I Sing to the Greenhearts
I Sing to the Greenhearts (Seren Books) by Maggie Harris presents poems of place, inflected by the complex passages of history. Steeped in experience, full of speakers who remain undaunted despite time’s ravages, the collection travels from Guyana to Wales, gathering potent symbolisms of our natural and man-made worlds as they journey. Attuned to the […]
About Kingston
Salvage
The Village of One
Yellow is Not for Girls Like Me
The Delicate Beast
The Delicate Beast (Bellevue Literary Press) by Haitian-born Roger Celestin examines life beneath the shadow of oppression, set in the 1950s in a locale called the “Tropical Republic”, symbolic of Haiti itself. In Celestin’s debut novel, a young male protagonist grows up in the lushness and decadence that his family’s elite status affords him, before […]
The Unbearable Taste of Fruit and Wine
The Unbearable Taste of Fruit and Wine (Android Press) is the new speculative novella by R.S.A. Garcia, author of adventure-fantasy novel The Nightward. Inspired by elements of Greek mythology, Garcia’s latest publication focuses on Iris, a loyal but wistful conscript to the service of the Archmagus, a mysterious, powerful figure who rescued Iris in her […]
All the Blood is Red
Angel in Tobago
Come Let Us Sing Anyway
Orange Laughter
A Sense of Arrival
A Sense of Arrival (Duke University Press) by Kevin Adonis Browne addresses the question, “Of what components is a Caribbean self constructed?” This new non-fiction book by the 2019 winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature is a gathering of personal narrative, sociological inquiry, photography, art installation, and rhetorical essay, all shared in […]
Kingdom of No Tomorrow
Kingdom of No Tomorrow (Algonquin Books) by Fabienne Josaphat follows the life of a Haitian woman, Nettie Boileau, who is swept into the radical social change promised by the Black Panther party in 1968. Nettie falls in love with a defense captain of the party, Melvin Mosley, and moves with him to Chicago to establish […]
Kipling Plass
Kipling Plass (Peepal Tree Press) by Berkley Wendell Semple teems with the dramatic, humorous, and salacious encounters that typify life in politically charged 1970s Guyana. Set in the rural village of Mahaicony, told from the perspective of an observant and precocious 14-year-old boy, the novel explores issues of race relations, fractured familial structures, economic instability, […]
The Petro-state Masquerade
The Petro-state Masquerade (University of Chicago Press) by Ryan Cecil Jobson, subtitled Oil, Sovereignty, and Power in Trinidad and Tobago, studies the implicit, longstanding power relationship between T&T’s oil economy and the attainment of political power. The oil and gas industries have long been understood to be the backbone of the nation’s financial security. Jobson’s […]
Death in the Dry River
The Believers
A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl
A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl (Zibby Books) by Nanda Reddy straddles Miami and Guyana in a plotline that exhumes the ghosts of the past, revealing how they impact the protagonist attempting to secure a safer future.
A House for Miss Pauline
A House for Miss Pauline (Hachette) by Diana McCaulay centres a singular ninety-nine-year-old woman as its protagonist. The eponymous Miss Pauline carries a lifetime of secrets, embedded in the very bricks of her home.
After Poems, Psalms
After Poems, Psalms (Peepal Tree Press) by John Robert Lee showcases the prolific poet’s capacity to summon verses towards healing, redemption, and grace. Rooted in Christian allegory, the work is pan-Caribbean in nature.
Another Man in the Street
Another Man in the Street (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Caryl Phillips homes in on a Caribbean migrant’s experience in 1960s London. The novel follows his emotional intimacies generated in that time, and how they persist into modernity.
Casualties of Truth
Casualties of Truth (Grove Atlantic) by Lauren Francis-Sharma is a fast-paced literary thriller, cycling between Johannesburg, South Africa and Washington, DC, examining the possibilities of redemption alongside the past’s ever-present systemic violence.
Good Dirt
Good Dirt (Ballantine Books) by Charmaine Wilkerson plunges a prominent Black family into chaos following a childhood tragedy. This second novel from Wilkerson, author of the popular debut Black Cake, blends historical and contemporary settings.
How to be UnMothered
How to be UnMothered: A Trinidadian Memoir (Restless Books) by Camille U. Adams troubles the supposed sanctity of the bond between a mother and child, drawing on the author’s own upbringing in Trinidad, asking difficult questions about love and trauma.
Ibis
Ibis (The Overlook Press) by Justin Haynes is a debut novel, combining elements of criminality and magical possibility to reflect on a Venezuelan migrant girl’s fate in the coastal Trinidadian village of New Felicity.
Love Forms
Love Forms (Faber & Faber) by Claire Adam follows a Trinidadian mother’s emotionally fraught journey towards reconnection with the daughter she gave up in Venezuela at birth, posing existential considerations on the very nature of forgiveness itself.
My Own Dear People
My Own Dear People (Akashic Books) by Dwight Thompson presents an island society beset by rampant toxic masculinities, and one young man’s quest to liberate himself from its shameful associations, while atoning for his complicity in past crimes.
The Beginning of a Journey
The Beginning of a Journey (Peepal Tree Press) by Earl Lovelace assembles poems from the veteran writer’s early career, in language that confirms Lovelace’s attentions to the Caribbean landscape as much as the enduring quality of human connections.
The Grand Paloma Resort
The Grand Paloma Resort (Ballantine Books) by Cleyvis Natera is set in the titular Grand Paloma Resort, a Dominican Republic luxury hotel that caters to its clients’ wildest desires. Natera’s novel reveals the underpinnings of such an idyllic setup, in captivating detail.