Si­mon Lee

Truth–as in a mat­ter of fact–be­ing stranger than fic­tion, it's quite pos­si­ble that many jour­nal­ists are not mere­ly hack­sters of the mun­dane, or the sen­sa­tion­al, but are prac­ti­tion­ers of lo re­al mar­avil­loso–or mag­i­cal re­al­ism.

This is sure­ly the case in Trin­i­mad where up­side is downs, yours had was to be mines, leff is right and no­body ever wrong. So the fly was for re­al, hap­pi­ly buzzing one mo­ment and swal­lowed alive the next. Glad it wasn't me, ent?

That's an un­fin­ished sto­ry but one I'm go­ing to have to leave for Franz Kaf­ka's ghost; you have to ad­mit when it comes to writ­ing about in­sects and ver­min, he's the man. So to leave your stom­ach and mine in place I'm wing­ing back­wards to oth­er un­fin­ished busi­ness, hope­ful­ly more palat­able than the fly. Much ear­li­er in this year, which seems to have flashed by like a greedy Fer­rari chew­ing up the road, I came across a list pur­port­ing to be the best 100 books ever. I think the list was pub­lished in The UK's Dai­ly Tele­graph, that or­gan of en­crust­ed con­ser­vatism and a view of the world dat­ing from the 19th cen­tu­ry when British gun­boat diplo­ma­cy along with the Bard of Avon kept rest­less na­tives un­der man­ners from Rawlpin­di to Rousil­lac.

I've lost the list but I do re­mem­ber that be­sides in­clud­ing quite mi­nor Eng­lish writ­ers, there were some ma­jor world writ­ers –in­clud­ing sev­er­al No­bel prize win­ners–who were un­ac­count­ably omit­ted. There was no William Faulkn­er, Samuel Beck­ett, Saul Bel­low, RK Narayan, Ernest Hem­ing­way, Mario Var­gas Llosa.

Apart from Naipaul, the list en­tire­ly ex­clud­ed the Caribbean, but we'll get back to that. If we're look­ing a the world's canon then it's in­ex­plic­a­ble (be­yond An­glophile my­opia) that writ­ers like Kenyan Ngu­gi wa Thion'go (Dev­il on the Cross), Japan­ese Yukio Mishi­ma (The Sailor Who fell from Grace with the Sea), his younger com­pa­tri­ot Ka­suo Ishig­uro (Re­mains of the Day), French­man Georges Bataille (Sto­ry of the Eye), South African-born Botswanan Bessie Head (Maru), Niger­ian Ben Okri (The Fam­ished Road), Czech Jaroslav Hasek (The Good Sol­dier Sve­jk) or Zim­bab­wean Dambud­zo Marechera (The House of Hunger), didn't get a men­tion, along with Amer­i­can William Bur­roughs (The Naked Lunch).

Now since my very own buck­et of books has been dip­ping deep in the wells of Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture for the past 30 years and some, I'm go­ing to sug­gest some ti­tles which should def­i­nite­ly have been on that list, or rather on a list which can be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly. Peo­ple who ac­tu­al­ly care about lit­er­a­ture rep­re­sent­ing the in­cred­i­ble range of the hu­man con­di­tion (which is nei­ther re­strict­ed to Eng­land, or the west) would or cer­tain­ly should know that all of the fol­low­ing de­serve their place. So in no par­tic­u­lar or­der (to avoid of­fend­ing liv­ing and dead) al­low me to present: Marie Vieux-Chau­vet whose Love, Anger, Mad­ness is a tour de force, a bril­liant­ly craft­ed and chill­ing cri­tique of the Du­va­lier era in Haiti.

Since I be­gan in Haiti, which is no mis­take, we'll con­tin­ue with that foun­da­tion­al nov­el of Jacques Roumain-Mas­ters of the Dew, and Ed­widge Dan­ti­cat's ac­count of the 1937 "Pars­ley" Mas­sacre of 30,000 Hait­ian mi­grant work­ers or­dered by the Do­mini­can dic­ta­tor Rafael Tru­jil­lo–Farm­ing the Bones. Dany La­fer­riere, who in­sists he's not a Hait­ian, nor a Caribbean, nor a black writer (he even wrote a book called I Am a Japan­ese Writer) must be in­clud­ed on the strength of his out­ra­geous and hi­lar­i­ous de­but nov­el How to Make Love to a Ne­gro With­out Get­ting Tired. Rene De­pestre's Hadri­ana in all my Dreams, in­vokes the Vodou world­view, while his near con­tem­po­rary Jacques Stephen Alex­is pro­duced a grip­ping po­lit­i­cal nov­el with Gen­er­al Sun my Broth­er.

The Cuban Ale­jo Car­pen­tier's take on the af­ter­math of the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion–The King­dom of This World–pre­dates Mar­quez as the first mag­i­cal re­al­ist text and his com­pa­tri­ot Jose Leza­ma Li­ma's Par­adiso, takes a ro­co­co turn from fic­tion in­to phi­los­o­phy, while Car­br­era In­fante's Three Trapped Tigers is a baroque com­ic bal­anc­ing act, suf­fused with the ex­u­ber­ance of Cuban mu­sic.

Com­ing back home be­fore time and space dis­ap­pear, Ladoo's No Pain Like this Body, Naipaul's Biswas, Lovelace's Drag­on and Selvon's Lone­ly Lon­don­ers are all es­sen­tial, as is Lam­ming's Cas­tle and now Mar­lon James' Brief His­to­ry of Sev­en Killings. Wil­son Har­ris' Palace of the Pea­cock must be in­clud­ed, even if on­ly three peo­ple in the world can claim to ful­ly un­der­stand it, and Mit­tle­holz­er's acute de­con­struc­tion of Trinidad's racial hi­er­ar­chy–Morn­ing at the Of­fice–de­serves a list­ing.

In the French An­tilles we must in­clude Chamoi­seau's oral his­to­ry Tex­a­co along with his el­e­gy to Cre­ole sto­ry­tellers Soli­bo Mag­nifique and Maryse Conde's retelling of Wuther­ing Heights–Wind­ward Heights, and how could we ever for­get Jean Rhys' Wide Sar­gas­so Sea.

Fi­nal­ly to those stu­dents who thanked me on Sat­ur­day–I didn't get to say what a plea­sure it's been re­dis­cov­er­ing some of the Caribbean texts above with you. You all made me ques­tion and reread what I hope is now part of your own li­brary for life.