R.I.P. Ralph de Boissiere, 6 October, 1907-16 February, 2008

Ralph de Boissiere--who died last Saturday, at the age of 100--lived the longer part of his life in Australia, almost as far as you can get from Trinidad without leaving the planet, but he never ceased to be Trinidadian. The proof is in his work, especially his best known novels, Crown Jewel and Rum and Coca-Cola, which portray Trinidad society in the 1930s and 40s with a vast historical scope and ambition very few West Indian writers have attempted.

Had de Boissiere's major novels not been published by a small Australian press in the 1950s, had they not languished in relative obscurity until the 1980s, he might have been a major influence on two generations of West Indian writers and substantially changed the direction of West Indian literature.

Even though his work was all but forgotten for so long, his place in West Indian literary history is secure. Along with Albert Gomes, Alfred Mendes, and C.L.R. James, de Boissiere was one of the chief figures in the Beacon group, a circle of young, talented, ambitious writers that formed around the Trinidadian magazine of that name in the early 1930s. Even then, among such liberal peers, de Boissiere stood out for his radical politics, and his socialism was always a motivating force in his writing.

In November 2007, the University of Trinidad and Tobago conferred an honorary degree on de Boissiere. In his citation, Kenneth Ramchand, associate provost of UTT, described him as "a man who overcame the biases of race and colour, a gifted writer who projected the power of the powerless, a visionary whose insight into the compassion and creativity of our men and women and of their potential to create a humane and just society has been unwavering throughout his hundred years."

Publishing an excerpt from de Boissiere's forthcoming autobiography in the CRB last year was one of the great honours of my time with the magazine. It pleases me immensely to think that he saw his prose in our pages just a few months before he died.

Kei Miller, "New Voice"

The British bookshop chain Waterstone's recently chose twelve writers for its "New Voices" campaign--see this article in The Bookseller for details.

"One of the most exciting things for readers every year is watching new writers appear on the literary scene and discovering their work," said Toby Bourne, fiction buying manager. "Our New Voices demonstrate a real wealth of talent and variety--a completely different collection of novels from all genres and from authors of different nationalities. These 12 authors have written fresh, challenging and convincing stories, and we expect to find them shaping the world of fiction for years to come."

The twelve writers and their new books will enjoy special placement in Waterstone's branches and on their website. And the Caribbean connection? The Same Earth, the first novel by the young Jamaican writer Kei Miller, is one of the featured titles.



(Can't wait till March, when Kei's book will appear in shops? In the February CRB, you can read his essay on being a poet with an identity crisis.)

Commonwealth shortlists....

The 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize shortlists were announced today--see them here. Disappointingly, only one Caribbean title has been shortlisted for the "best book" regional prize in the Canada/Caribbean division: Erna Brodber's new novel The Rainmaker's Mistake (look out for Annie Paul's review in the February CRB). And all the "best first book" shortlistees are Canadian--though one of them is crypto-Caribbean. David Chariandy, whose novel Soucouyant is shortlisted, was born in Canada of Trinidadian ancestry. (Thanks to CRB contributor Jonathan Ali for pointing this out.)

I'm sure some Antilles readers will share my disappointment that more Caribbean writers were not shortlisted for the only major writing prize most are eligible for.... What others do you wish had caught the judges' eyes? What were the other standout Anglophone Caribbean fiction titles of last year? (I'd point to Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw's Four Taxis Facing North, a CRB book of the year.) Tell us in the comments below.

What's going on?

- Thinking of doing a creative writing MFA? Geoffrey Philp offers some advice on how to choose the right programme, and includes suggestions from other writers as well.

- Tobias Buckell muses on the perils of blurbing: "authors get enough rejection in life as it is with their work ... having to turn down a fellow colleague is awkward."

- In yesterday's Stabroek News, Al Creighton turns to the words of Martin Carter for wisdom and solace in the aftermath of the horrific Lusignan murders.

- Aphra Benn's seventeenth-century novel Oroonoko is a crucial early representation of the Caribbean (specifically, Suriname) in literature. A stage adaptation by the Nigerian writer Biyi Bandele has just opened in New York; Charles Isherwood reviews it in the New York Times.

- And Marlon James loves Junot Díaz's novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao--which, as he points out in this blog post, he's reviewed for the February issue of the CRB (running a little late, dear readers, but on its way to subscribers shortly...).

(Indeed, it's because your humble Antilles blogger has been working hard to get the next CRB off to press that posting here has been light of late. What can you look forward to in our next issue, apart from Marlon's zesty piece? Reviews of the latest books by V.S. Naipaul, Erna Brodber, and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, plus an anthology of poems about Che Guevara and the massive catalogue of the Yale Centre for British Art's recent Belisario show.... Also essays by Kei Miller and Tobias Buckell, a review of Roberta Stoddart's retrospective catalogue, a portfolio of contemporary Cuban art, poems by Tanya Shirley, Vahni Capildeo, and Ishion Hutchinson.... If you're not a subscriber, better sign up now!)

Casa de las Américas prizewinners

Cuba's Casa de las Américas has announced the winners of its 2008 premios literarios. Most of the prizes are for literature in Spanish, and this year's winners include writers from Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico. Two of the prizes have gone to Caribbean writers. Haitian Louis-Philippe Dalembert has won the prize for Caribbean literature in French or Creole, for his novel Les dieux voyagent la nuit; and Héctor Díaz Polanco of the Dominican Republic has won the Ezequiel Martínez Estrada essay prize. (The Casa de las Américas has not awarded a prize for literature in English since 2006, when the winner was Mark McWatt's Suspended Sentences.)

Carnival reading

Band of the Year?, by Trinidadian artist Ashraph (see more works from his current show here)

Here in Trinidad, the countdown to Carnival is getting louder and louder. Just four more days to Dimanche Gras.... But CRB readers on foreign shores needn't feel entirely left out. A selection of Carnival-related pieces from our archives, to help assuage the jumbie:

- From the February 2007 CRB: Kenneth Ramchand's essay "On Minshall and reading the mas".

- From August 2006: Mark Lyndersay on Jeffrey Chock's Trinidad Carnival: Photographs.

- From November 2005: Jeremy Taylor on Robert Antoni's novel Carnival.

- From February 2005: Keith Smith on Stefan Falke's book of photographs Moko Jumbies: The Dancing Spirits of Trinidad.

- Also from February 2005: Anu Lakhan on Gordon Rohlehr's A Scuffling of Islands: Essays on Calypso.

Marlon Griffith, Jaime Lee Loy, and Nikolai Noel: La Fantasie

From the pavement outside, 43 Norfolk Street looks like many other modest houses in the east Port of Spain neighbourhood of Belmont. It is a simple single-storey structure with a galvanize roof, decorative fretwork along the eaves, potted palms on either side of the front door. Only the fresh coat of white paint gives away the house's newness. Two weeks ago, this was an empty lot of land, overgrown with razor grass. The little white house has sprung up not quite overnight, but almost. And for three days--or, rather three nights, from 25 to 27 February--it is home not to a respectable working-class family, but to La Fantasie, an ambitious project by three young artists, Marlon Griffith, Jaime Lee Loy, and Nikolai Noel.

The title plays off the name of the posh neighbourhood, just north of here, where the prime minister lives. For most Trinidadians, giving the name "La Fantasie" to a house is a bitter joke, rousing memories of the hundreds of millions spent to construct the new prime ministerial palace, which opened in late 2007. It also pokes sardonic fun at the fantasy of social and economic progress peddled by the current Trinidad and Tobago government. The country is wealthier than ever in its history, and vast sums are spent on public works projects of dubious value, while the crime rate soars and basic infrastructure--for education, health, transport--crumbles.

The windows of the little house at 43 Norfolk Street are tightly shuttered. Just inside the door is a heavy black curtain, which the visitor must grope past. You find yourself in a room crowded with old furniture, its walls, floor, and ceiling painted black, the only light coming from a pair of eerie video projections. Using one of the flashlights hanging from a nail beside the door, you explore the nooks and corners. A trail of blood leading to the fridge, more puddling on the top of the stove. The flashlight has an ultraviolet lamp built in. Flick the switch: drawings appear on the walls and furniture, done in flourescent ink. Evidence of violence, betrayal, despair. A house of horrors. A haunted house. A haunted nation, trapped between a fantasy and a hard place, with a trail of blood leading to...?

Virtual Yardies

You may recall, dear readers, that in the August 2007 CRB I interviewed writer and lit-blogger Geoffrey Philp. Our conversation ranged over various issues confronting Caribbean writers who explore online media, and it ended with Geoffrey's description of his most recently completed work:

NL: You recently announced that you’ve completed the manuscript of a new novel, “Virtual Yardies”, in which the story is told “entirely as blogs, IMs, and e-mails”--with a mystery plot, no less, in which a group of Jamaican bloggers are stalked by a religious zealot. What inspired this, apart from your own blog?

GP: The idea was a spin-off from another recently completed novel, “Zone of Uncertainty”, which is being shopped around. I realised that the “lost daughter” character lived in the world of blogs, so I wanted to carry that idea a bit further. I also asked myself, what would an epistolary novel look like in 2007? The plot needed something to propel it forward, and given the duplicity and anonymity of the web, it seemed a natural fit for the creation of my Jamaican “Cotton Mather” character who will take God’s law into his own hands and kill the unrighteous: “fornicators, adulterers, men who lie with men”.

One important note. Because it’s also a love story, the characters alternate between IMs and emails, depending on their level of intimacy.

Geoffrey's twenty-first-century "epistolary" novel has now gone live, via a series of blogs he's set up, each belonging to one of his fictional characters. Virtual Yardies starts here, and the plot will unfold in the coming days and weeks....