Raphael earns his living as a butcher in a hillside village in rural Trinidad. He is also a wouldbe author, but there have been so many distractions to the novel he has been writing for fortyone years that many of the characters have lost patience and gone off to do their own thing. But somehow, miraculously, the novel, as Raphael has planned it in one hundred chapters of a thousand words, seems to write itself...Time in this richly ambitious and multilevelled novel is both circular and simultaneous, but moving, as Raphael ages, towards a sense of dissolution both of persons and of the culture of the village. But if there is a tragic realism about the passage of time, there is also a constant aliveness in the novels love affair with the language of Creole Trinidad with its poetic inventiveness and wit, with the improvisatory sounds of jazz and the undimmed urge of the villagers to create meaning in their lives. Above all, there is Raphaels belief that in the making of his fiction, however messy and disobedient its materials, art can both challenge the destructive passage of time and make us see reality afresh.

Binding: Paperback;256 pages; Publisher: Peepal Tree Press Ltd; Classification: FA; Weight: 496 g; Dimensions: 136 x 206 x 26

Something not quite right? You have 21 days from the day you receive it, to send something back.

Please note, we cannot offer refunds on fashion face masks, cosmetics, pierced jewellery, adult toys, and swimwear or lingerie if the hygiene seal is not in place or has been broken.

Items of footwear and/or clothing must be unworn and unwashed with the original labels attached. Also, footwear must be tried on indoors. Items of homeware including bedlinen, mattresses, and toppers, and pillows must be unused and in their original unopened packaging. This does not affect your statutory rights.

Click here to view our full Returns Policy.