Books by Earl Lovelace

"e;Is Just a Movie is not just a movie, it's a poem, too."e;Arundhati Roy, author, The God of Small Things"e;Earl Lovelace is arguably the Caribbean's greatest living novelist. In Is Just a Movie, he writes at the top of his considerable literary powers, picturing the Caribbean's poor and powerless defending their ever-embattled humanity with resourcefulness and tenacity."e;Randall Robinson, author, Makeda"e;Is Just a Movie confirms Lovelace as a master storyteller of the West Indies."e;Financial Times"e;Lovelace is bursting with things to say about this complex, heterogeneous society in the late twentieth century. This he does with a flair that at its best reaches a soaring rhapsody."e;Guardian"e;Funny, moving, endlessly inventive."e;The Times"e;Vivid prose that seems to stroll effortlessly across the page. Lovelace's loose writing is meticulously crafted but it retains its casual elegance."e;The Times Literary SupplementIn Trinidad, in the wake of 1970's Black Power rebellion, we follow Sonnyboy, Singer King Kala, and their town's folk through experiments in music, politics, religion, and loveand in their day-to-day adventures. Humorous and serious, sad and uplifting, Is Just a Movie is a radiant novel about small moments of magic in ordinary life.Earl Lovelace's books include While Gods Are Falling, winner of the BP Independence Award; the Caribbean classic The Dragon Can't Dance; and Salt, which won the 1997 Commonwealth Writers Prize. For Is Just a Movie, he has won the Grand Prize for Caribbean Literature by the Regional Council of Guadeloupe.

Exposing the political and cultural failure to address the challenges of postcolonial Trinidad, this insightful novel portrays a world where the working man must face the crime and violence that is destroying the social body. Walter Castle is dissatisfied with his regular job in the Laventille slum in Port of Spain. As the prospect of promotion is bleak and crime and lawless youth become insupportable, he dreams of going back to the village community he grew up in. Unfortunately, the force of nostalgia is not supported by actual memories and as Walter abandons his dreams he is forced to choose between turning into a drone who passes through life without leaving a mark, or standing up for himself. Originally published in 1965, this story remains surprisingly contemporary with its astringent critique of the top-down authoritarianism of nationalist politics.

With Black Plays, Yvonne Brewster clearly demonstrated the need for a regular anthology to record the vitality of Black playwriting.

James, Earl Lovelace's Caribbean classic tells the story of Calvary Hill - poverty stricken, pot-holed and garbage-strewn - where the slum shacks 'leap out of the red dirt and stone, thin like smoke, fragile like kite paper, balancing on their rickety pillars as broomsticks on the edge of a juggler's nose'.

After 19 years of teaching his pupils to emigrate, Alford George, elitist schoolteacher turned populist politician, is forced to work out a welcome for the diverse races of Trinidad to their own island and how to liberate those who, despite emancipation, are still struggling under old captivities.