Mattress Makers
Mattress Makers (Mawenzi House), the newest collection of poetry by Guyana-born Sasenarine Persaud, recognises the literary achievements of late Caribbean writers such as V.S. Naipaul and Sam Selvon, consequently seeking to offer tribute to them in verse. Many of these poems are concerned with commemorations to honourable ancestors and their traditions, notably the rituals preserved […]
No One Will Come Back For Us
No One Will Come Back For Us (Undertow Publications) by Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction writer Premee Mohamed dives deep into eldritch and sinister elements of storytelling. Influenced by science fiction masters but retaining her own individual style, Mohamed takes the reader into one unsettling situation after another, displaying world-building that partially draws on islander […]
The Secrets of Catspraddle Village
Set in a fictional locale in Barbados, The Secrets of Catspraddle Village (Black Coral Publishing) by Callie Browning investigates the mysterious, multifaceted lives of its inhabitants, chronicling events that involve disappearances, deception, and hair-raising escapades. Drawing on the interconnectedness of village life, Browning’s short stories make ample use of Barbadian dialect alongside historical references to […]
The Siege of Burning Grass
Mohamed’s full-length dystopian novel, The Siege of Burning Grass, is forthcoming from Solaris/Simon & Schuster in March 2024.
When the Vibe is Right
A loose revisioning of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, When the Vibe is Right (Balzer & Bray) by Sarah Dass is the author’s second Young Adult romance novel, following her debut Where the Rhythm Takes You. Set in the kaleidoscopic heart of Trinidad and Tobago Carnival, When the Vibe is Right follows the entanglements of […]
Archie
Beloved
Lantana Strangling Ixora
Monsoon on the Fingers of God
Much Ado About Nothing
The Girl with the Hazel Eyes
The Island of Forgetting
Equal to Mystery
Equal to Mystery: In Search of Harold Sonny Ladoo (Peepal Tree Press) by Christopher Laird traces the unlikely life and times of Trinidad’s mysterious late novelist, author of No Pain Like This Body and Yesterdays. Taking a keen interest in Ladoo’s history — both on and off the record — Laird retraces the author’s migration […]
Suite as Sugar
Suite as Sugar (Dundurn Press) by Camille Hernández-Ramdwar takes the reader through the thorny entanglements surrounding spaces between life and death, in short stories that traverse Toronto to Trinidad. Most of the stories in the debut collection take a subversive approach to discussing controversial topics, including vaccination statuses and academic doublespeak. Ancestors, too, play a […]
Sweet Undoings
Sweet Undoings (Deep Vellum Publishing) by Yanick Lahens, translated from the French by Kaiama L. Glover, moves through the interconnected lives of Haitians contending with corruption, murder, and internecine intrigue. Told from multiple perspectives, set in Port-au-Prince, Lahens’s study of the Haitian capital does not shy away from a sense of its embedded difficulties. Exploring […]
The God of Good Looks
The God of Good Looks (Fig Tree, UK; William Morrow, US) by Breanne Mc Ivor tackles the double-standards of the Trinidadian beauty industry while simultaneously serving up a tantalising love story. Mc Ivor’s novel debut, following her short story collection Where There Are Monsters, employs epistolary narratives laced with satire to illuminate the taboos and […]
The Mother Island
The Mother Island (Self-Published) by Jacinth Howard the debut collection of poems from the Vincentian academic and researcher, explores the Caribbean woman’s psyche through writing steeped in nature, history, identity, and family. The book’s four sections — “Hurricane Season”, “Wenchcraft”, “Animal Tales and Outings”, and “Paradise” — position the speakers of these poems in direct […]
Time Come
Time Come: Selected Prose (Picador) by Linton Kwesi Johnson assembles decades of the trailblazing poet’s prose writing, gathering speeches, articles, critical reviews, obituaries on fallen comrades, and more. An indispensable pillar of British Caribbean literature, Johnson’s poems define generations of thought, activism, and resistance. Time Come is a blueprint for the writer’s consciousness and politics, […]
Yesterdays
A Sun to be Sewn
A Sun to be Sewn (Other Press), by Jean D’Amérique, translated from the French by Thierry Kehou, balances both extreme violence and concentrated tenderness in one young girl’s coming of age. Set in the slums of Port-au-Prince, D’Amérique’s debut novel charts a course of personal growth despite often-horrific odds that frequently feels Shakespearean, yet is […]
Fire Rush
Fire Rush (Jonathan Cape, UK; Viking, US), a novel sixteen years in the making from Jamaica-born, UK-based Jacqueline Crooks, centres Black womanhood in 1970s London and Bristol. Longlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction, Fire Rush follows protagonist Yamaye through a dancehall and dub-infused club scene, while she yearns for deeper connections to her […]
Self-Portrait as Othello
Self-Portrait as Othello (Carcanet), the sophomore poetry collection by Jamaica-born, UK-based Jason Allen-Paisant, reinvents the damning stereotype of Othello’s Moor, in experimental and ekphrastic verses. Thinking with Trees, Allen-Paisant’s first book of poems, won the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry: his second collection is as sensitively wrought, more directly interfacing with the politics of […]
The Gospel According to the New World
The Gospel According to the New World (World Editions), by Maryse Condé, translated from the French by Richard Philcox, is a satirical and humorous reinvention of the story of Christ. Longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize, the novel follows the messianic path of Pascal, born on an island resembling Guadeloupe, who sets out to […]
The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts
The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts (Catapult), Soraya Palmer’s debut novel, focuses on sisters Zora and Sasha Porter, both of whom are estranged from their melded Trinidadian and Jamaican heritage. The sisters’ parents kept numerous secrets, none of them easily explained: Zora and Sasha navigate layers of suppressed trauma in order […]
Breaking Free — a Journey from Trauma to Empowerment
Blackgirl on Mars
Blackgirl on Mars (Repeater/HarperCollins) is the second non-fiction book by Lesley-Ann Brown following her memoir debut, Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Black Woman to her European Son (2018). Brown journeys through the United States during the zenith of the Black Lives Matter movement, ending up in T&T to perform last rites for her grandmother. She […]
On a Woman’s Madness
On a Woman’s Madness (Two Lines Press), by 2021 Dutch Literature Prize winner Astrid Roemer, is reissued from its original 1982 publication, translated from the Dutch by Lucy Scott. Recognized as a hallmark LGBTQ+ novel of its time, Roemer’s novel follows Noenka, fleeing an abusive marriage in a reclamatory act of self-searching, taking her from […]
Radio Plays
Radio Plays (Methuen Drama/Bloomsbury) collects several plays by Kittitian-British novelist, playwright and essayist Caryl Philips. Featuring an introduction by scholar Bénédicte Ledent, the book compiles the following radio dramas: The Wasted Years; Crossing the River; The Prince of Africa; Writing Fiction; A Kind of Home: James Baldwin in Paris; Hotel Cristobel; A Long Way from […]
The Last Train
The Last Train (Broadstone Books), the eighth full-length collection of poems by Mervyn Taylor, journeys through the poet’s Trinidadian upbringing through his travels across the archipelago, incorporating reflections on Carnival traditions and creating roots in Brooklyn. The immediate political climate of police brutality against Black American lives is captured in a specific section of the […]
Windward Family
Windward Family (Thread/Kindle Scribe), subtitled “An atlas of love, loss, and belonging,” is a memoir by Vincentian-descended, UK-based Alexis Keir, in which he explores his profound attachments to St. Vincent across the decades. Choosing to return some twenty years after his childhood there, Keir unwinds a tangled skein of family secrets, betrayals, and grim realities. […]