A Small Place

By Jamaica Kincaid,

Book cover of A Small Place

Book description

From the author of AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER and ANNIE JOHN, a novel set in Antigua, where the idyllic tourist facade hides a colonial legacy of corruption, remedial social investment, and disenfranchised local culture. First published in 1988.

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Why read it?

2 authors picked A Small Place as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Her withering critiques of tourists might make you mad if you’ve ever been one, but read until the end. While the book spares no one in its scathing view of Antigua’s colonial past and corrupt present, it is the evocative, precise prose and the insistence on a shared humanity that will remain with you long after the sting fades.

Kincaid is best known as a writer of novels and short stories, but this brief and piercing account of her experiences growing up in Antigua towards the end of the era of British rule illuminates the ways in which slavery and colonialism continued to affect Afro-Caribbean people well into the twentieth century. This memoir describes ugly experiences in beautiful prose, and offers a meditation on how individuals are shaped by history, but also how they can liberate themselves from it.

From Natalie's list on the English Caribbean.

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