#ReadCaribbean

Winner of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction.

Shortlisted for the Society of Authors' McKitterick Prize 2022.

Finalist of the 2022 Firecracker Award in Fiction.

Coconut trees. Carnival. Rum and coke. To many outsiders, these and other sunny images are all they know about life in the Caribbean. However, if you want to learn how the locals truly live and experience the dark and often harrowing truths that lurk behind the idyllic imagery of Caribbean culture, then come visit the town of Pleasantview.

Come during election season, and see how one candidate sets out to slaughter endangered turtles - just for fun. Or come on the day the other candidate beats his "outside-woman," so badly she ends up losing their baby. Then come on the night of the political rally, where this grieving woman exacts a very public revenge. Stay a while, and see how this single event has a trajectory far beyond the lives of the immediate actors, with often tragic and heartbreaking consequences.

Written in a remarkable combination of Standard English and Trinidad Creole, Pleasantview showcases the entrenched political, racial, and class dichotomies of life in Trinidad: the generosity (yet cruelty) of the average Trini; the sense of optimism (and yet, despair) which permeates everyday interaction; and the musicality of Caribbean creole (kriol) expression that masks an ingrained and frequently violent patriarchy.

Merging the vibrancy and darkness of recent Caribbean writers such as Ingrid Persaud and Claire Adam with the linguistic experimentation of Marlon James's A Brief History of Seven Killings, Pleasantview is a landmark work in international fiction.

Alford Dalrymple Gardner is one of the few living passengers to have travelled on the Empire Windrush. Now published for the first time, this is his stirring life story.

On 22nd June 1948, the Empire Windrush sailed from Kingston, Jamaica, to harbour at Tilbury Docks. It carried 1,027 passengers and two stowaways, and more than two thirds of them were West Indies nationals. Alford Dalrymple Gardner was among them.

Alford's story traverses both the uplifting highs and intolerant lows that West Indian migrants of his generation encountered upon travelling to Britain to forge out a life. From joining the British military during World War II to being forcibly deported back to Jamaica once it was won-only to come back to the UK when the government decided it needed him again-Alford witnessed milestone events of the 20th century that shaped the country he still lives in today.

In the context of a supposedly 'post-Imperial' Britain where the lives of West Indian migrants hang precariously on the whims of the Home Office, Alford's heartening testimony is a celebration of those who endured hardships so that generations to come could call this place home.

The autobiography of Tippa Irie, Stick To My Roots tells the reggae musician's incredible story - from his trail-blazing beginnings in Saxon Sound International to the Grammy Award-nominated "Hey Mama" with the Black Eyed Peas.

Titled after his 1980s hit single, the book will cover 35 years of Tippa's prestigious career: from the first sign of talent as a child in South London and family members encouraging him to enter local talent competitions, to making his first record and becoming the powerhouse and Reggae-scene legend he is now.

It's a story full of dreams, music and hope, but also the deep traumas and tribulations that Tippa experienced throughout his life, and how music helped him to move forward.

Set during Carnival in Haiti 1938, a young and beautiful woman named Hadriana drinks a mysterious potion on her wedding day and collapses at the altar. She is buried and later resurrected by an evil sorcerer and, as a zombie, enters the collective memory of her town of Jacmel. Hadriana's conversion serves as the inciting incident into an exploration of the strange and esoteric on the island, where Voodoo and Catholicism keep a symbiotic relationship, young women turn into zombies, young men turn into lascivious butterflies and nothing is quite what it seems.

Hadriana in All my Dreams is a frolic through mystery and eroticism that reveals vital truths about the nature of humanity.

As seen in Grazia, the Guardian, and more...

Recognised as one of the most beloved fruits of the Black diaspora, Plantain holds profound value within the cultures and communities it is part of.

Compiled for the first time in one vibrant volume, A Quick Ting On: Plantain is an infectious cultural insight into the versatile fruit. Discover its contested historical origins, its multilingual etymology, the biochemistry that sets Plantain apart from regular bananas and, yes, the War of Pronunciation... Is it Plan-tain or Plan-tin?

Containing recipes from across the African continent, the Caribbean, Latin America and South Asia, author Rui Da Silva paints an astonishing international history of Plantain - celebrating food within Black households across the globe as an intimate marker of identity and culture.

From recent developments in farming practices to the effects of food gentrification on working-class Afro-Caribbean communities, Rui also explores the politics behind Plantain. Inflation, Fairtrade, and climate change all have a part to play in the ongoing journey of this coveted fruit.

Unifying stories of innovation, hardship and, above all, love, A Quick Ting On: Plantain is a delicious ode to the intersection of food, culture and humanity.

A reimagining of Shakespeare with a Caribbean twist!

Garrick takes Shakespeares's soliloquys and monologues and incorporates Jamaican Patois to make them relevant for a new age and audience. Inventive and engrossing, this collection is imperative and complimentary when teaching the canon.

Safe in their love, Tom and Naomi Barnes pursue their dream of family and prosperity as transplants to a London brimming with immigrants and opportunities. Tom works long hours for a super hedge fund and Naomi, while bringing up their boys, is commissioned by fellow prep school mum and immigrant Solange Wolf, to write her memoir. Solange's story of survival and triumph, from the slums in Haiti to becoming an executive with a Fortune 500 company, and inter-racially married to an equally successful man, has a profound effect on Naomi, herself a mixed-race transplant from Colombia married to a white British man full of ambition and potential. Everyone she knows back in Cartagena, including her own mother would kill for a marriage like hers.

As Tom grows in wealth and power, he assumes control over the direction of his family's life, including the direction of Naomi's. She feels herself shrinking into a cardboard cutout of herself, adorned in beautiful clothes, diamond jewelry, and all the trappings of money. She watches Tom create a life that has no need for her as a woman, only as a mother and trophy wife. When Tom tells her, he is voting Brexit to please his boss, Naomi finally decides to take action.

She heads to Solange's house where she finds a heartbroken Solange who declares that her husband has suddenly left her for a younger woman pregnant with his child. Despite the years of hard work, she implores Naomi to burn the manuscript, insisting her entire life has become a lie. With this rash request, Naomi starts to doubt not only Solange's grasp on reality but her own, and although the two women try to heal, their wounds run deep, and London, without the backing of powerful men, is now a strange and alienating backdrop against which they must redefine themselves.

Symona Brown is a 37-year old Jamaican British woman living in South London looking for her Mr. Right whilst her biological clock loudly ticks on. She announces to her close girlfriends after a boozy Sunday brunch, that she is ready to up her game and start actively dating, to their surprise and delight. After being consciously single for a number of years, Symona remembers what worked and what definitely did not in the dating arena. This time, she knows who she is and what she wants.

As Symona reflects through her memories from one Mr. to another, she reveals her sensual, hilarious and downright frustrating encounters. She finds herself asking, "What does it mean to be a Black woman trying to exist, date and find love?" In her pursuit of love, she learns new lessons and different answers. Will these new revelations get her what she wants?

An intricately woven tapestry of stories where survival, resilience and self-discovery are passed down through generations of an Indo-Trinidadian family.

Celeste Mohammed's second novel-in-stories, Ever Since We Small, is a family saga which covers a sweeping landscape from the days of the British Raj in India, to multicultural modern Trinidad. Written in a blend of Standard English and several flavours of Trinidad kriol, the book follows the bloodline of a young woman, Jayanti, after her decision to become a girmitiya, an indentured labourer in the Caribbean.

Jayanti's grandson, Lall Gopaul, seeks to escape the rural village where he was born, but becomes seduced and corrupted by urban life. His son, Shiva, is forced to take a child-bride, Salma, but never recovers from the guilt. Heartache follows for their three children - Anand, Nadya and Abby - who must each find a way to accept and yet move past their parents' failed example.

Along the journey of these ten interconnected stories, the alchemy necessary to turn the Gopauls' inheritance of pain into a "generation of gold" requires intervention by the living and dead, the "real" and the mythical, the mundane and the magical, the secular and the sacred.

Commemorating the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush, Stephen Bourne's War to Windrush explores the lives of Britain's immigrant community through the experiences of Black British women during the period spanning from the beginning of World War II to the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948.

In those short years, Black British women performed integral roles in keeping the country functioning and set the stage for the arrival of other black Britons on the MV Empire Windrush. The book shows first-hand what life was like in Britain for black women through photography and evocative prose.

War to Windrush retraces the history of those women who helped to build the great, multicultural Britain we know today. It is a celebration of multiculturalism and immigration, much needed in today's political climate.

On a misty Monday-21st June 1948-the MV Empire Windrush sailed up the Thames and anchored at Tilbury Dock, London. There were a total of 1027 passengers on board with 802 passengers from British Colonies in the West Indies. Of these individuals, 539 were from Jamaica. The infamous images of the passengers walking down the gangplank the next morning would be the moment the Windrush Generation was born.

A Circle of Five reflects on the stories of the three hundred thousand or so making the same journey between 1948 and 1971 by showcasing the voices of five Jamaican women, Evelyn, Emma, Irene, Ivy, and Melissa. Each woman tells their own story, all beginning in early 1930's rural Jamaica and spanning some eighty years. Through these women, the experiences of the Windrush Generation come alive, honouring this vital period in British history.

Set in rural Jamaica, Swimming With Fishes evokes the pain of a love affair between a London-born businessman and a native Jamaican and how that affair grows beyond either of their expectations...

Sickle cell anaemia sufferer Kat wants a baby more than life itself. When the town herbalist foretells of a man from across the ocean who will father her child, Kat's hopes intensify into a dream that must come true.

Her encounter with Londoner Ben years later edges the prediction toward reality. Their friendship develops into an all-consuming love to which they both surrender. Unknown to Ben, however, Kat is a sickle cell sufferer; and unknown to Kat, Ben is already married.

The autobiography of Tippa Irie, Stick To My Roots tells the reggae musician's incredible story - from his trailblazing beginnings in Saxon Sound International to the Grammy Award-nominated "Hey Mama" with the Black Eyed Peas.

Titled after his 2010 hit single, the book will cover 40 years of Tippa's prestigious career: from the first sign of talent as a child in South London and family members encouraging him to enter local talent competitions, to making his first record and becoming the powerhouse and Reggae-scene legend he is now.

It's a story full of dreams, music and hope, but also the deep traumas and tribulations that Tippa experienced throughout his life.

Day-to-day struggles, triumphant success stories, and unique circumstances. A Quick Ting On: Black British Businesses takes you on an informative journey through the history (and future) of Black British entrepreneurship.

With the powerful rise of Black British culture, Black British entrepreneurship has rapidly become a point of great conversation. This book looks back on significant moments in Black British entrepreneurship, exploring the struggles, success and unique circumstances that face Black British businesses.

Featuring brilliant interviews and first-hand accounts from some of your favourite Black British entrepreneurs - from Sharmadean Reid MBE and Ozwald Boateng OBE, to the late great Jamal Edwards MBE, and so many more - Black British Businesses offers an important insight into how one of Britain's most influential communities continues to create space in the world of business.