Caribbean Passages : A Critical Perspective on New Fiction from the West Indies

Offering a critical perspective on new fiction from the West Indies, Patteson concentrates on five writers from diverse backgrounds and with differing perspectives and artistic strategies, who nevertheless share a commitment to an imaginative repossession of Caribbean life and consciousness. The writers discussed are Olive Senior (Jamaica), who combines devices of oral narratives and sophisticated plot structures; Zee Edgell, in particular her internationally acclaimed first novel, Beka Lamb; Caryl Phillips, who writes of the cultural displacement of being black in England and how this becomes a spur to "imaginative sustenance"; Shiva Naipaul (Trinidad), whose work focuses on what is lost when a new society is formed: and Robert Antoni (Trinidad), whose writing embodies the process of creolization. Contents Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: The Third Wave 2 Olive Senior Country Air & Juggled Worlds 3 Zee Edgell The Belize Chronicles 4 Shiva Naipaul Choreographer of Chaos 5 Caryl Phillips The End of All Exploring 6 Robert Antoni The Voyage In Bibliography Index About the Book