Trinidad and Tobago / All works
Novel
Fireflies
Shiva Naipaul · 1970
Synopsis
In Trinidad, the Khojas pass for the most respectable of the island's Hindu families. Their rank now rests only on badly kept cane fields and on the jewels jealously guarded by old Mrs Khoja. Married by arrangement to Ram Lutchman, a noisy and unfaithful bus driver, Baby Khoja brings up her two sons, Romesh and Bhaskar, and faces with tenacity the decline of a family tearing itself apart. The narrative is at once comic and deeply sad.
Context
The novel appeared in London in 1970 from André Deutsch, then in New York from Knopf. Annette Grant sees in it a remarkable and lively portrait of the Hindus of Trinidad. It was longlisted in 2010 for the Lost Man Booker Prize, then reissued in 2012 in the Penguin Modern Classics, with a preface by Amit Chaudhuri. It appeared in French in 1992, from the Éditions de l'Olivier, then in paperback.
Who it is for
For reading a great family chronicle of Trinidad, comic and sad, available in French and in paperback.
Prizes and reception
It received the Winifred Holtby Prize, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the New Statesman's Jock Campbell Award.
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