In this collection, award-winning author Austin Clarke has caught, in his characters, a sweet longing for youth and an anxiety-stricken rage at old age; an immigrant’s longing for a placid, lost home and his lust for a new high-speed motorcar life; and an intellectual’s sense of empowerment by black history even as he watches what […]
A compelling collection that explores the lives of Afro-Caribbean immigrants living in Canada, these eight short stories delve into the experiences of displaced persons living in contemporary society—all with a richness of language and rhythm that is authentically urban.
Set in 1961 Barbados, this novel centers on how the self-governing colony is ruled by a “Labor” party while the sugar estate workers wonder whether slavery has ever ended. Raging against the “White” alliance of the landowning class, the church, and their Black supporters, this story lashes out at ignorance, self-deception, and pusillanimity. Revealing an […]
When a man and a woman meet on a summer day, they begin a conversation that will change both their lives. As their words weave a web of intimacy, the man finds himself drawn into recollections of his childhood on an island in the Caribbean, and to reflections on his life in Toronto. But who […]
When an elderly Bimshire village woman calls the police to confess to a murder, the result is a shattering all-night vigil that brings together elements of the African diaspora in one epic sweep. Set on the post-colonial West Indian island of Bimshire in 1952, The Polished Hoe unravels over the course of 24 hours but spans the […]
Austin Clarke’s luminous novel, written in vivid, hypnotic prose, reveals the dislocations of place and the nature of memory and the past. Two elderly Barbadian men, childhood friends who haven’t seen each other in fifty years, collide in a snowstorm on a Toronto street. In the warmth of a nearby bar, through the afternoon and […]
This is Austin Clarke's acclaimed trilogy about a group of West Indian domestics, their friends, lovers, spouses, and employers living in Toronto. In rich, exuberant language, Clarke illuminates a world inhabited by earthy, garrulous, but terribly isolated people, all living, working and struggling with the alien, White, Canadian culture. Dominated by warm, superbly drawn characters […]
Born in Barbados in 1934, Clarke came to Toronto in 1955. He has been in the forefront of West Indian writing and Canadian writing ever since, bringing to bear on all of his dozen books of fiction his erudition, his familiarity with key figures in the civil rights movement, and his active engagement with politics […]