Antigua and Barbuda / All works
Novel · A way to begin
Annie John
Jamaica Kincaid · 1985
Synopsis
In Antigua, Annie grows up adoring her mother, from whom she never parts. At ten, she discovers death and becomes attached to its rites. Around twelve, her mother suddenly asks her to leave childhood behind and to carry herself like a young lady, and the child does not understand this reversal. Then come the school where she shines, the passionate friendship with Gwen, the admiration for a girl whom the book calls the Red Girl, a long languishing illness, and revolt against what is expected of her.
Context
The chapters first appeared separately in the New Yorker, before being collected in a volume in 1985 in New York by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book closely follows the author's childhood, and her next novel, about a young Antillean woman who arrives in the United States, is read as its continuation. In France it appeared in 1996 from Éditions de l'Olivier in a translation by Dominique Peters, and it was reissued in 2025 by Cambourakis, translated by Dominique Letellier.
Who it is for
A short coming-of-age novel, in limpid prose and without difficulty; it can be read in one sitting.
Prizes and reception
Its French publisher reads it as a book written shortly after Antigua's independence, in which the heroine's thirst for freedom echoes that of the island.
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