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FROM THE PUBLISHER - This novel of Trinidad, written by a young native of the island, brings us a scene completely new to fiction and characters who are strikingly, delightfully original. It is the story of sixteen-year-old Tiger and his dark-haired child bride, Urmilla, grappling with the mysteries of married life in a Trinidadian village. Poverty and carefree fun, swift tragedy and quiet poetry, mingle in their honest and amusing story. We learn about wartime Trinidad, with its mixed population of Negroes, Chinese, and East Indians; we watch the arrival of American troops with their money-bringing projects; we follow the colorful cycles of tropic landscape. The wild music of steel bands and the picturesque language of Calypso songs accent its pages. But the story unfolds largely through the eyes of Tiger, the Indian boy. It is his speech that gives it flavor, his point of view that gives it meaning. 'Wat is to is, must is,' his friends say; but Tiger is not satisfied. His reach for something beyond his narrow horizon makes him, for all his strangeness, a fellow creature whose hopes and disappointments we can share. 'A first novel of quite remarkable quality a poetic, amusing, and frequently touch- ing portrait of a community living against a background of dramatic events.. It is rare indeed to find a writer who, like Mr. Selvon, can catch the quality of native colonial life so dispassionately and with such skill when he has himself been a member of a similar community to that which he describes.' - Times Literary Supplement (London).

Samuel Selvon was born of East Indian parents in Trinidad, British West Indies, in 1924. He was educated on the island, and served for five years during the war on a British minesweeper. After the war he worked on a Trinidad newspaper and began to write short stories, several of which were broadcast by the EEC in London. He followed them to England, bringing with him the manuscript of this first novel. He now works for a British publishing house.

Check zenosbooks.com for a copy of this book

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