The 2014 Bo­cas Lit Fest Fic­tion prizewin­ner, As Flies to What­less Boys by Robert An­toni, con­firms the promise of his first (Com­mon­wealth Prize-win­ning) nov­el of 1992, Div­ina Trace.

While it can be read strict­ly as Caribbean fic­tion (a lo­cal set­ting; Cre­ole voic­es; an Amer­i­can-born au­thor of Tri­ni parent­age) What­less Boys al­so func­tions var­i­ous­ly as metafic­tion (a genre which self-con­scious­ly high­lights a text's sta­tus as an arte­fact, fore­ground­ing the fic­ti­tious­ness of fic­tion); oral lit­er­a­ture; a (post­colo­nial) cri­tique of Utopi­an fan­tasies and the in­scrip­tion of the New World; a mul­ti­lay­ered in­quiry in­to lan­guage, si­lence, talk, and the shift­ing de­f­i­n­i­tions of lit­er­a­ture it­self in the dig­i­tal age.

With a time­line that slides be­tween 1845/6, 1881 and 2010, What­less Boys in­cor­po­rates mul­ti-texts: press clip­pings and archival ma­te­r­i­al, e-mail mes­sages, pho­to­copies, let­ters, maps (print­ed and hand drawn), di­a­grams, recipes, re­ceipts, mes­sages drawn in the sand and a note writ­ten on 17 sep­a­rate notepad pages thrown from a win­dow, which need re­assem­bling for sense. But like a wor­thy post­mod­ern script, it "lit­er­al­ly" moves be­yond the page and in­to oth­er me­dia, with Web site con­nec­tions to two short films; a play; a lit­er­ary re­view and patent­ed di­a­grams of two in­ven­tions, which fig­ure promi­nent­ly in the nov­el: Ger­man in­ven­tor John Et­zler's Naval Au­toma­ton and Satel­lite.

Lin­guis­ti­cal­ly, the nov­el is pure coscomel, a kitsch com­bo of 19th- and 21st-cen­tu­ry Stan­dard (prop­er), ver­nac­u­lar and Ger­man "in­fect­ed" Eng­lish; emerg­ing Trinidad Eng­lish Cre­ole and new mil­len­ni­um Tri­ni text talk. Oral­i­ty ("What the a--e") mix­es eas­i­ly with the lit­er­ary, and lo­cal read­ers may be de­light­ed to come across many Cre­olisms, which are dis­ap­pear­ing from cur­ren­cy: ob­zoc­k­ee, bazodee, geegeeree, as­sas­sa­t­aps and oth­ers like the "what­less" of the ti­tle, which cause us to halt and ques­tion or­thog­ra­phy and spelling: too-tool-bay, bos�e-backed, tout baghi, toe tee. As sig­ni­fiers in a meta/post­colo­nial text, these usu­al­ly play­ful in­ser­tions help frame An­toni's sub­ver­sive sub­al­tern counter dis­course to the dom­i­nance of "Prop­er" Eng­lish; his val­i­da­tion of lan­guage va­ri­ety- specif­i­cal­ly the use of Cre­ole–and ul­ti­mate­ly the cre­ativ­i­ty and sta­tus of Caribbean and oth­er post­colo­nial lit­er­a­tures.

But What­less Boys didn't win for all the box­es it ticks off in post­mod­ern lit­er­ary/cul­tur­al stud­ies, it's a win­ner be­cause it tells so many sto­ries (oral, true, fac­tion­al, fab­ri­cat­ed) and in­volves read­ers in the fic­tion of fic­tion. Long af­ter the mod­ernist re­jec­tion of the nov­el, it re­minds us that sto­ry­telling is fun­da­men­tal to the hu­man con­di­tion, re­gard­less of the­o­ret­i­cal fash­ion and in what­ev­er forms it as­sumes.

As Willy Tuck­er (great great-grand­fa­ther of the au­thor) mus­es to­wards the end, af­ter his fa­ther's tale of how the fam­i­ly came to Trinidad: "We sat in si­lence, ex­haust­ed, filled-up. We didn't move. We couldn't have moved–not a mus­cle–be­cause we didn't ex­ist yet. Nei­ther me nor him. On­ly the sto­ry ex­ist­ed, dur­ing those few fi­nal mo­ments of si­lence af­ter my fa­ther's voice had come to a halt...he want­ed me to know that it be­longed to me too. It was my sto­ry now, same as his. But I re­alised some­thing else...I re­alised that the sto­ry was far from fin­ished. Far from end­ed. It was sim­ply rest­ing, sleep­ing in its paste­board box. Be­cause all I had to do was lift open the cov­er to wake it up."

In one sense What­less Boys is part fam­i­ly his­to­ry, ini­ti­at­ed by the con­tem­po­rary Yan­kee re­searcher Robert An­toni, the "Mr Ro­bot" of a se­ries of erot­ic e-mails sent by Miss Ram­sol, di­rec­tor of the T&T Na­tion­al Archives, which be­sides in­tro­duc­ing the voice of 21st-cen­tu­ry Trinidad and its text speak, al­so de­flate any lit­er­ary pre­ten­tious­ness ("so mr ro­bot I cant WAIT 2 show it 2 u & I would be hold­ing it PER­SON­AL in my of­fice at de back of de archives, cause dis is sure­ly de most im­por­tant & ex­cit­ing piece of news & HIS­TOR­I­CAL AR­TI­FAC u find yet 4 u re­search pon u fam­i­ly here in t'dad, & I want to see de look pon u face when u read it...ps I would be hold­ing dis pho­to­copy 4 u in my back of­fice just as I say & wear­ing my den­tal floss panties 4 u & me 2 cel­e­brate 2geth­er 2!!!").

But the cen­tral nar­ra­tive con­cerns the love af­fair be­tween 15-year-old William Sanger Tuck­er and the mute 19-year-old Mar­guerite, both mem­bers of the Eng­lish-based 1845 Trop­i­cal Em­i­gra­tion So­ci­ety's dis­as­trous at­tempt to es­tab­lish a qua­si-Utopi­an, so­cial­ist set­tle­ment in the New World. Brain­child of ge­nius/char­la­tan Ger­man en­gi­neer John Et­zler and his more prac­ti­cal­ly-mind­ed as­so­ciate Con­rad Stollmey­er, the set­tle­ment of­fered a re­turn to an Edenic par­adise for dis­en­chant­ed Eng­lish ar­ti­sans, based on the labour-sav­ing po­ten­tial of two of Et­zler's to­tal­ly im­prac­ti­cal in­ven­tions–for the land ex­ca­vat­ing Satel­lite and the sea-de­vour­ing Naval Au­toma­ton–both pow­ered by nat­ur­al en­er­gy.

If Et­zler's delu­sions are rem­i­nis­cent of mag­i­cal re­al­ism and re­call west­ern New World ex­ot­ic fan­tasies from More's Utopia (1516) and Shake­speare's Tem­pest (1610) to De­foe's Robin­son Cru­soe (1719) and on­wards, the Willy�Mar­guerite ro­mance, like the sto­ry of Miss Ram­sol's Fa­tel Roza­ck an­tecedents, high­lights the pos­si­bil­i­ty of trans­gress­ing class and caste of­fered by emer­gent Trinidad. Mar­guerite's mute­ness al­so iron­i­cal­ly ques­tions as­sump­tions both about oral­i­ty and writ­ing ("who needs to talk any­way? Since you could write down every­thing you had to say quick and easy enough? Clear and sim­ple & fixed there sol­id on the page with­out a chance of mis­con­cep­tion nei­ther? Be­cause what-the-ar­se-good has talk ever done any­body? So many peo­ple al­ways flap­ping they traps? So much wast­ed breath? Brain­less bab­ble?")

If talk is cheap, or even fu­tile, writ­ing is not much bet­ter, as Willy dis­cov­ers at­tempt­ing a per­sua­sive let­ter to Mar­guerite; "...in­evitably, un­avoid­ably, I came to un­der­stand the truth: writ­ing is im­pos­si­ble. It's un­bear­able. The dif­fi­cul­ty of writ­ing down any­thing a-tall. With any kin­da ac­cu­ra­cy, or mean­ing, or any kin­da worth. Any kin­da con­tent."

While pos­ing the dilem­ma of writ­ten com­mu­ni­ca­tion, or any com­mu­ni­ca­tion, An­toni has suc­ceed­ed in de­liv­er­ing a text which iron­i­cal­ly ref­er­ences so many of the con­cerns and con­tro­ver­sies of post­mod­ern lit­er­a­ture, while hu­mor­ous­ly weav­ing sto­ries, voic­es and lan­guages which make What­less Boys a con­tend­ing clas­sic of post­colo­nial lit­er­a­ture.

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