Novel
The Lunatic
Anthony Winkler · 1987
Synopsis
Aloysius, whom his village in the parish of Saint Ann considers mad, lives alone in the woods and talks only with the trees, the bushes and the animals, which answer him. Inga Schmidt, a sturdy German photographer who has come as a tourist, makes him her lover and drags him along in her whims; a village butcher soon joins them, and the trio plans to burgle the house of a rich landowner, Busha McIntosh.
Context
The novel appeared in 1987 in Secaucus, New Jersey, from Lyle Stuart, and the same year in Kingston from Kingston Publishers, in two hundred and twenty-five pages; it was its author's second novel, coming shortly after a first book that had taken more than ten years to find a publisher. The Washington Post Book World saw in it the funniest book it had read in ten years, and Akashic Books reissued it in New York in 2007.
Who it is for
In English mixed with Jamaican Creole, crude in places; a farce that revels without restraint in the island's taboos.
Prizes and reception
Adapted for the screen in 1991 by Lol Creme, from a screenplay by the author, with Paul Campbell as Aloysius.
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