Caribbean Writers Series

"Traces the unlikely career of Ganesh Ramsumair, a failed schoolteacher and impecunious village entrepreneur, and the most beloved politician in Trinidad. To understand a little better, one has to realize that in the 1940s masseurs were the island's medical practitioners of choice."--P. of cover.

"Thomas Carlyle commented over 150 years ago that the name Goethe conjured up something vague and monstrous to English ears - a reaction still recognizable today. As a contribution towards redressing this situation this volume, published on the 250th anniversary of Goethe's birth, contains the largest selection of his poetry in English verse translation ever published. The poems (alongside their German originals) are arranged chronologically and, among much else, include his most famous lyric verse, longer poems in their entirety, passages from his poetic drama Faust and from his popular, but in English little-known, romantic idyll Hermann and Dorothea, and the whole of his long-suppressed masterpiece The Diary, sometimes referred to as the most erotic moral poem ever written. A substantial introduction sets the poetic work in the context of Goethe's often surprisingly unsettled life."--BOOK JACKET.

Ramgolall, an old Indian cow-minder, has punished himself to save money and has built a sizeable herd. His first daughter is the long-established mistress of a well-to-do white planter. Their son, his grandson, Geoffry, light-skinned and ambitious, seems destined for success. but when Geoffry become involved with Kattree, his daughter by a second marriage, Ramgolall's world begins to fall apart (from the book's back cover).

Like the scattered islands themselves, these fragments from 31 women writers display the range and variety of Caribbean cultures and traditions. From memories of turn-of-the-century Dominica to contemporary USA, Africa and Britain, writers from Haiti to Cuba and Jamaica are included.

Margaret is fourteen and wants to help her best friend, Zulma, escape from Canada and fly back to Tobago to live with her grandmother. But, coming to terms with growing-up, relationships and responsibilities is not quite so straitforward, and the parental threat of 'Good West Indian Discipline' is never far removed. This is a charming, humorous and perceptive tale of adolescence and the friendship of two young African American girls.

"When the seductive Monica returns to her village, she wants to make a new start. But Kristoff village, set in the heart of rural Jamaica, is about to become a whirlpool of emotion. Every encounter with Monica stirs up women's dissatisfactions and men's desires. When those emotions develop into hatred and jealousy, Monica is made to pay for what she has done." "In this novel Opal Palmer Adisa brings to life a whole community and writes with understanding and compassion about the frailties of its inhabitants. Drawing on Jamaican folklore, she shows what is at the heart of village life, and how that life can be sustained."--Jacket.

Set in Guyana, this is the story of Mama King, trapped by age and infirmity, but ultimately indomitable. It is a protest at institutions that isolate, and a way of life that denies respect and responsibility for the weak.

"In Rihata, a small, sleepy backwater town in a fictitious African state, a couple and their family struggle to come to terms with each other against a background of political manoeuvring and upheaval."--Back cover.

As a black child, born in present-day London, Tyrone has always been encircled by the loving arms of his family. But this secure world begins to fragment when his grandparents are evicted and violence shatters the heart of the black community. Could help come from the far-off island that had nurtured his parents and grandparents?

Gwennie lives in a sleepy rural Jamaican backwater. Weighed down by a wayward brood of children and trapped in her unhappy marriage to Walter, she seeks solace in the company of her friends. Soon she is faced with a hard choice: does she flee from her past and the everyday cruelties of family life, or is she to remain a victim of her sense of duty? Me Dying Trial is a poignant tale of a woman's response to sudden change. It combines lightness and joie de vivre with an infinite sadness.

Dale's passionate relationship with Nevin is foundering. Hope and despair, jealousy and yearning battle within him. He must confront the antagonism of family, church and society to his homosexuality. A mysterious illness is threatening the gay community of late 1970s Jamaica. When Dale's friends succumb to it, his own isolation increases and he is pushed towards desperate action.