Trinidad and Tobago / All works
Novel
No Pain Like This Body
Harold Sonny Ladoo · 1972
Synopsis
At the beginning of the twentieth century, in Tola, a village of Indian rice farmers on a Caribbean island, a family struggles to survive during the August rainy season. Four children, among them Sunaree and little Rama, eight years old, work in the rice field beside their mother, while the father, a drinker, is quick to anger and violence. Under a storm that does not stop, the mother and the children flee his rage into the cane fields; the grandparents live on the other side of the river.
Context
The book appeared in 1972 in Toronto from House of Anansi, edited by Dennis Lee, co-founder of the house. It depicts the life of Indo-Trinidadians emerging from indenture, and critics have studied in it the legacy of the Ramayana, family violence and the role of place. Reissued in 2003 with an introduction by Dionne Brand, then in 2022 by Vintage Classics, it was translated into French in 2006.
Who it is for
For reading an intense narrative of the Trinidadian countryside at the beginning of the century, available in French.
Prizes and reception
Caribbean Beat hailed in it the arrival of a talented writer, and the novel has been reissued in the Vintage Classics series.
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