Island Voices

The Caribbean area--a scattering of ethnic and racial groups with a history of colonialism and bloody attempts to assert nationhood--provides an exciting background for these tales of wit melancholy resentment fantasy and superstition. If the Caribbeans are searching for a newness a cool upheaval of the spirit as Salkey suggests in the introduction then the writers gathered together here--from the outstanding such as V. S. Naipaul Samuel Selvon and John Hearne to the younger little-known and never before published--are true to this spirit.