Welcome to the latest installment of the Bocas Book Bulletin, a monthly roundup of Caribbean literary news, curated by the Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago’s annual literary festival, and published in the Sunday Express.
New Releases
Sweet Li Jie (Peepal Tree Press) by David Dabydeen is situated between China and Guyana in the 1870s, told in epistolary form. Centring the courtship of the titular character, Li Jie, her suitor Jia Yun faithfully documents life in British Guiana, where he has travelled in hopes of improving his circumstances. Dabydeen showcases the economic and cultural realities of Guyana during its post-emancipation era, particularly interpersonal dynamics between Chinese migrant labourers and Guyanese workers. From Wuhan to Demerara, Sweet Li Jie reveals a human striving for a more sustainable life.
Lara: The England Chronicles (Fairfield Books) by Brian Lara focuses, in the record-breaking T&T cricketer’s own candid words, on his pioneering English tours. Not restricted solely to these matches, the biography rewards fans of the veteran sportsman with colourful reflections and behind-the-scenes details of Lara’s life on and off the field. Co-authored with Phil Walker, editor-in-chief of Wisden Cricket Monthly, Lara: The England Chronicles evinces a true rootedness in team spirit, in Lara’s belief in the power of galvanising teamwork in the oval.
Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions (Tachyon Publications) by Nalo Hopkinson presents fifteen short stories by the multiple award-winning Jamaica-born author. Hopkinson’s first short story collection since 2015, Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions delves into intergalactic journeys, the debilitating effects of climate change, and a sustained immersion in Caribbean culture. Attitudes to authority and parent-child relationships also receive particular narrative attention in the work. Sharing protagonists beset by often-catastrophic odds, these short stories boast a virtuosic range, tackling deadpan humour alongside existential crises with well-timed skill.
Andrea’s Journey: From Freedom Fighter to True Liberation (self-published) by Andrea Jacob chronicles the author’s remarkable journey from small-village schoolteacher in South Trinidad to trailblazing member of NUFF (National Union of Freedom Fighters), the 1970s radical militant group. In a time of unique sociopolitical revolt and evolution, Jacob writes affectingly of her involvement in NUFF, leading to her participation in the largest bank robbery in T&T history. Detailing her subsequent fugitive status and incarceration, Jacob’s message — of determined rehabilitation guided by spirituality — is duly inspiring.
Baby Cerberus (Wolsak and Wynn) is the second poetry collection by Canadian poet of Indo-Guyanese descent Natasha Ramoutar. These poems inhabit a language shaped and altered by gameplay, horror and mystery in popular media, and Indian mythology. The speakers are altered by what they consume, and involved in the symbioses they create with their environments, their understandings of past and present lives. In multiple nods to the fearful unknowability of the future, Baby Cerberus employs a lexicography that straddles adaptation and superstition, with impressive results.
Jurassic Coast (Peekash Press) by Jannine Horsford, the T&T author’s debut pamphlet, curates poems from a full-length work in progress, inspired by the author’s time studying and living on the south coast of England. The subjects of Jurassic Coast combat isolation and insidious forms of racism while steeping themselves in the wild beauty of the landscape surrounding them. Horsford, a 2022 recipient of a Bocas Emerging Writers Fellowship, wrote these poems during her fellowship.
The Birthday Cake (Peekash Press) by T&T author Rajiv Ramkhalawan is an excerpt from a novel in progress, one which centres a dramatic mystery at its heart. In Ramkhalawan’s debut pamphlet, acclaimed chef Suresh prepares a time-honoured birthday dessert for his loving wife. Beneath the surface of this apparent domesticity, all is not as it seems; Suresh suspects his wife is no longer who she claims to be. Ramkhalawan, a 2022 recipient of a Bocas Emerging Writers Fellowship, wrote this piece during his fellowship.
Awards and Prizes
Jamaican-British writer Jacqueline Crooks has received the 2024 PEN Open Book Award for her novel, Fire Rush (Viking). The award is given to a full-length book in any genre by a writer of colour, and awards a $10,000 USD cash prize as well as a funded artist residency at Civitella Ranieri. In their citation for Fire Rush, the PEN Open Book Award judges said, “The genius of Jacqueline Crooks’s novel lies in the muscular musicality of her writing, which animates every scene and character to vivid, full-bodied effect.” Prior to the publication of Fire Rush, Crooks released a debut collection of short stories, The Ice Migration (Peepal Tree Press).
Ingrid Persaud, born in Trinidad and Tobago and based in Britain, has been shortlisted for the 2025 Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award, worth £20,000 GBP. Now in its fourteenth year, the prize is given annually to two writers working on an as-yet-unpublished manuscript specifically related to the Americas. Persaud won the 2020 Costa Book Award for First Novel for her debut, Love After Love; her second novel The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh was published in 2024. The winners of the 2025 Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award will be announced on 4 December.
Caribbean Bestsellers
1. How to Say Babylon, by Safiya Sinclair
2. The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh, by Ingrid Persaud
3. The Bread the Devil Knead, by Lisa Allen-Agostini
4. A Death in the Dry River, by Lisa Allen-Agostini
5. Lara: The England Chronicles, by Brian Lara
