No. 18 • November 2008

Image above: Detail of The Kingdom of the Blind (2008), by Hew Locke; mixed media installation, dimensions variable; courtesy the artist and the Institute of International Visual Arts

Reviews

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Finding his centre
Jeremy Taylor on The World Is What It Is: The Authorised Biography of V.S. Naipaul, by Patrick French, and The Strange Luck of V.S. Naipaul, dir. Adam Low

Death’s other kingdom
Brendan de Caires on The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery, by Vincent Brown

All in the family
Kelly Baker Josephs on Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Gay and Lesbian Writing from the Antilles, ed. Thomas Glave

Echoes in the bone
F.S.J. Ledgister on After-Image, by Dennis Scott

It takes a village
Lisa Allen-Agostini on The Same Earth, by Kei Miller

Islands are worlds
Robert Edison Sandiford on Elemental, by John Robert Lee

Consider the camel
Anu Lakhan on Jamaican Food: History, Biology, Culture, by B.W. Higman

Ways of seeing
John T. Gilmore on Slavery, Sugar, and the Culture of Refinement: Picturing the British West Indies, 1700–1840, by Kay Dian Kriz

Less is more
Melanie Archer on Meiling: Fashion Designer, by Judy Raymond

Tuffer than tough
Geoffrey Dunn on Bob Marley, by Garry Steckles

From the New World
Simon Lee on Music in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Encyclopedic History, ed. Malena Kuss

IN BRIEF
• Gavin O’Toole on An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, by Randall Robinson
• Charmaine Valere on Fictions, Volume 1, by Ruel Johnson

ALSO NOTED
Other new and recent books

Etc.

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READING LIST

Frankly speaking

ON VIEW
Riotous assemblage
Nicholas Laughlin on The Kingdom of the Blind, by Hew Locke

TRIBUTE
Freedom fighter
Remembering David de Caires (1937–2008)

CONVERSATION
“Criticism as a question”
David Scott talks to Nicholas Laughlin about Small Axe

DOCUMENT
“Every poem is incomplete”
Selections from the poetry notebooks of Martin Carter, introduced by Rupert Roopnaraine

POEMS
• The Carpenter Seals Lily’s Widowhood, by Nicolette Bethel
• Night in the Gardens and Shield-Shaped, by Vahni Capildeo
• Ol’ Mary, by Jason D. Hill

LETTER
Philip Nanton on the Frank Collymore archive