Trinidad and Tobago / All works
Novel
Crown Jewel
Ralph de Boissière · 1952
Synopsis
Trinidad, in the thirties: mass unemployment, starvation wages, Black people at the bottom of the ladder and the English colonial elite at the top. The Black activist Le Maitre founds a workers' association on the model of British trade unions to unite a people whose identity has been broken. André, a young musician who sells yeast, hesitates between an Englishwoman, the daughter of a judge, and the one he loves, the teenage daughter of a Venezuelan seamstress, who believes in him as an artist capable of changing society. Tension rises up to the strikes in the oilfields.
Context
Begun in Trinidad as early as 1935 and taken up again in a new version after the labour unrest of 1937, the book was the first publication of the Australasian Book Society, founded by the author and six writers whom the established publishers refused. Sold at meetings in people's homes, at pitheads, on ships and at factory gates, its first printing of three thousand copies sold out in three months. Translated into Polish, German, Russian, Chinese and other languages, it was reissued in London by Allison & Busby in 1981. Kenneth Ramchand holds it to be essential for anyone who wants to understand the Trinidad of the thirties.
Who it is for
For those who want to read a social and political narrative of the Caribbean, in which the trade union struggle mingles with love stories.
Prizes and reception
Announced in 1981 by its London publisher as a lost masterpiece, it ranks among the great political novels of the Caribbean.
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