Novel
A Casual Brutality
Neil Bissoondath · 1988
Synopsis
Casaquemada, an invented Caribbean island, has lived off oil. Raj Ramsingh, a doctor trained in Toronto, returns there with his Canadian wife and their little boy. An orphan raised by his grandparents, he had left at eighteen so as not to take over the family shop. But the boom is ending and the country is turning sour: his cousin Surein deals in arms, houses are barricaded, the police patrol armed, and Raj wonders about his reasons for coming back.
Context
First novel by its author, published in 1988 by Macmillan of Canada, after a collection of short stories. The island is invented, its name means burnt house in Spanish, and it recalls Trinidad without being reduced to it: oil boom, recent independence, a population divided by race. When it was published in the United States, the New York Times review judged it perceptive, the Los Angeles Times review difficult to read.
Who it is for
A long novel, in the first person, made up of comings and goings between the present and the narrator's childhood.
Prizes and reception
Finalist for the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize; sold to publishers in Canada, the United States and Great Britain.
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