In 1845, British engineer John Adolphus Etzler invented machines to transform the division of labour and sent Londoners to form a utopian community in Trinidad. One recruit is a young boy, Willy, who helps build the society's future home in a remote swamp. Far from realising Etzler's dream of paradise, most are stricken with the 'Black Vomit'. Willy and his father make a final attempt to fix a wrecked boat, but Willy's father falls ill and dies. Willy must decide whether return home with Marguerite, who he loves, or become the head of his family in their new home.
"In 1786, the Scottish poet Robert Burns, penniless and needing to escape the consequences of his complicated love life, accepted the position of book-keeper on an estate in Jamaica. The success of his Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect made this escape unnecessary. Thus far is historical fact. In Andrew Lindsay's novel, Burns indeed goes to Jamaica and then to the Dutch colony of Demerara where, into the world of sugar and slavery, he brought his propensity for falling in love, his humanity and his urge to write poetry. In 1997 a small mahogany chest is found in a Wai Wai Amerindian village in Guyana. It contains Burns' journal from 1786 to 1796, when he died." "Andrew Lindsay's novel is a work of imaginative invention, poetic description and meticulous historical reconstruction. As a fellow Scot who has settled in Guyana, Lindsay brings an incomer's fresh eye to the Caribbean landscape and imaginative insights into how Burns as a man of his times might have responded to slavery. Not least, Illustrious Exile contains some brilliant versions of Burns' poems, as written in the Caribbean."--BOOK JACKET.
Special edition of Paul Harding’s Pulitzer Prize–winning debut novel—featuring a new foreword by Marilynne Robinson and book club extras inside In this deluxe tenth anniversary edition, Marilynne Robinson introduces the beautiful novel Tinkers, which begins with an old man who lies dying. As time collapses into memory, he travels deep into his past, where he is reunited with his father and relives the wonder and pain of his impoverished New England youth. At once heartbreaking and life affirming, Tinkers is an elegiac meditation on love, loss, and the fierce beauty of nature. The story behind this New York Times bestselling debut novel—the first independently published Pulitzer Prize winner since A Confederacy of Dunces received the award nearly thirty years before—is as extraordinary as the elegant prose within it. Inspired by his family’s history, Paul Harding began writing Tinkers when his rock band broke up. Following numerous rejections from large publishers, Harding was about to shelve the manuscript when Bellevue Literary Press offered a contract. After being accepted by BLP, but before it was even published, the novel developed a following among independent booksellers from coast to coast. Readers and critics soon fell in love, and it went on to receive the Pulitzer Prize, prompting the New York Times to declare the novel’s remarkable success “the most dramatic literary Cinderella story of recent memory.” That story is still being written as readers across the country continue to discover this modern classic, which has now sold over half a million copies, proving once again that great literature has a thriving and passionate audience. Paul Harding is the author of two novels about multiple generations of a New England family: Enon and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tinkers. He teaches at Stony Brook Southampton.
EDGAR AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL “Startlingly inventive.” —The New York Times Book Review “A sheer delight to read . . . I had no idea what was going to happen from one page to the next.” —Kate Atkinson On the grubby outskirts of Paris, Grace restores bric-a-brac, mends teapots, re-sets gems. She calls herself Julie, says she’s from California, and slips back to a rented room at night. Regularly, furtively, she checks the hometown paper on the Internet. Home is Garland, Tennessee, and there, two young men have just been paroled. One, she married; the other, she’s in love with. Both were jailed for a crime that Grace herself planned in exacting detail. The heist went bad—but not before she was on a plane to Prague with a stolen canvas rolled in her bag. And so, in Paris, begins a cat-and-mouse waiting game as Grace’s web of deception and lies unravels—and she becomes another young woman entirely. Unbecoming is an intricately plotted and psychologically nuanced heist novel that turns on suspense and slippery identity. With echoes of Alfred Hitchcock and Patricia Highsmith, Rebecca Scherm’s mesmerizing debut is sure to entrance fans of Gillian Flynn, Marisha Pessl, and Donna Tartt.
Based on the life of accomplished merchant prince King Ja Ja of Opobo, Anthony Kellman has created a rich and warm work of historical fiction. Posited as the main obstacle to British imperial interests in the palm oil-rich Niger delta, once omnipotent King Ja Ja is exiled to the West Indies for the final four years of his life. Focuses on the last four months of Jaja's life and the ironies of his position in Barbados where Whites dominated all aspects of life and race prejudice was nakedly expressed, but where many Black Barbadians were piqued to discover the presence of an African king amongst them. Weaving between the official records and the satirical and cynical traditions of the Tuk song. Traces the emerging love between an ailing African king in exile and his Barbadian servant Becka which brings new life to his battered body and spirit, and the Barbadian landscape lifts his despair, the king never loses his sense of the injustice done to him or gives up his desire to return home.
Moving beyond the postcolonial literature field’s traditional focus on the novel, this book shines a light on the "minor" genres in which postcolonial issues are also explored. The contributors examine the intersection of generic issues with postcolonial realities in regions such as South Africa, Nigeria, New Zealand, Indonesia, Australia, the United Kingdon, and the Caribbean. These "minor" genres include crime fiction, letter writing, radio plays, poetry, the novel in verse and short stories, as well as blogs and essays. The volume closes with Robert Antoni’s discussion of his use of the vernacular and digital resources in As Flies to Whatless Boys (2013), and suggests that "major" genres might yield new webs of meaning when digital media are mobilized with a view to creating new forms of hybridity and multiplicity that push genre boundaries. In focusing on underrepresented and understudied genres, this book pays justice to the multiplicity of the field of postcolonial studies and gives voice to certain literary traditions within which the novel occupies a less central position. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.
Blending Caribbean folk stories with modern settings, this unique collection of stories narrated by a ninety-seven-year-old woman alternates between the lewd, witty, and lyrical.
Spanning genres, continents, and eras, Amy Lee Lillard's multilayered debut story collection is all at once outrageously imaginative, provocative, and deeply absorbing. Ranging from the speculative to the historical, from magical realism to forensic realism, Dig Me Out carries the reader somewhere new -- and newly thrilling -- with every story, and constitutes a dazzling and rightfully dangerous work of literary art.
This photography-driven fiction about coming of age in the creep show of south Florida's swamps and strip malls is "unlike any book I've ever read . . . A completely original and clearheaded voice" (Ira Glass, host of This American Life) Out of South Florida's lush and decaying suburban landscape bloom the delinquent magic and chaotic adolescence of And Every Day Was Overcast. Paul Kwiatkowski's arresting photographs amplify a novel of profound vision and vulnerability. Drugs, teenage cruelty, wonder, and the screen-flickering worlds of Predator and Married . . . With Children shape and warp the narrator's developing sense of self as he navigates adventures and misadventures, from an ill-fated LSD trip on an island of castaway rabbits to the devastating specter of HIV and AIDS. This alchemy of photography and fiction gracefully illuminates the travesties and triumphs of the narrator's quest to forge emotional connections and fulfill his brutal longings for love.
Tells the story of how a group of Soviet and American doctors came together to stop nuclear proliferation and ended up winning the Nobel Peace Prize and influencing the course of history. This book also sheds light on what really drove and still drives the nuclear arms race, and the importance of citizen involvement in social change efforts.
