Novel
New Day
Vic Reid · 1949
Synopsis
On the eve of the coming into force of the 1944 constitution, old John Campbell remembers. As a child, he saw in 1865 the Morant Bay rebellion, led by the Baptist deacon Paul Bogle, and its repression; his brother Davie had joined the insurgents. The story runs from those years to the struggle of Garth, Davie's grandson, a lawyer who leads the fight for the island's self-government through law and negotiation.
Context
The novel appeared in 1949. It is one of the first in the English-speaking Caribbean to make Jamaican speech the very language of the narrative, a language that Reid blends with English to make it readable elsewhere, and it counts among the first works of the West Indian literary renaissance. Heinemann reissued it in 1973, with an introduction by Mervyn Morris, followed by Peepal Tree Press in 2016. It has not been translated into French.
Who it is for
To read the political birth of Jamaica, told in a language close to the speech of the island.
Prizes and reception
For James Ferguson, in Caribbean Beat, a committed celebration rather than an objective history, despite its implausibilities.