Novel
The Children of Sisyphus
Orlando Patterson · 1964
Synopsis
In the Dungle, a shantytown in west Kingston built on the city's rubbish dump, Dinah, a prostitute, wants to escape her life. She leaves her partner, Cyrus, takes a job as a servant, then turns to a revivalist church and its pastor, Shepherd John, who promises her a new existence. Around her, others too are looking for a way out, like Mary, who dreams of a future for her daughter, or the Rastafarians gathered around Brother Solomon.
Context
The novel appeared in 1964 in Britain, then in 1965 in the United States, with Houghton Mifflin. Patterson drew on Albert Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus, which he had read as a student, to portray lives caught in poverty and in the promises of the cults. Peepal Tree Press reissued it in 2011, with an introduction by Kwame Dawes, who already hears in it the language and popular culture from which reggae would be born.
Who it is for
To read the great Jamaican novel of the shantytowns of Kingston, written under the sign of Camus.
Prizes and reception
The novel won Patterson the prize for the best novel in English at the World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar.