CLR James - Hardcover

Dhondy, Farrukh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297646133 ISBN 13: 9780297646136

Publisher: Pantheon Books, 2001

Synopsis

CLR James will be remembered wherever cricket is played, yet his career is enigmatic. Farrukh Dhondy s new biography sets out to decode the enigma and unravel the long journey James made from Trinidad to Brixton. CLR James was a marxist philosopher, intent on paper at least on world revolution. But later in life, he rejected the incendiary rhetoric of his youth. He was an unabashed elitist, but at the same time fought discrimination of any sort. Farrukh draws on his friendship with CLR James, which began when James was already an old man and continued until his death at the age of 89. He assesses the contribution James made to modern political thinking and to the growth of Black consciousness. He celebrates his love of cricket and shows how the concepts of fair play and gamesmanship could and did become the abiding principles of a Black colonial revolutionary

About this title

From the Inside Flap

A long-overdue critical appreciation of the West Indian historian and political activist who played a towering role in the cause of Pan-Africanism in the twentieth century.

Born in Trinidad in 1901, Cyril Lionel Robert James was a precocious polymath all his life. By the time he was a teenager and already a certified teacher, he had embarked on a lifelong advocacy for the Trinidadian oppressed. He embraced Marxism while living in England during the 1930s, during which time he published, among other works, The Case for West Indian Self Government and his masterpiece, The Black Jacobins.

James lived in the United States from 1939 until he was expelled during the McCarthy terror for his political activities. Thereafter he divided his time between London and Trinidad (where he served as Secretary of the West Indies Federal Labor Party) and, until his death in 1989, wrote works of both fiction and nonfiction that would profoundly influence the Black Power movement in the United States and independence movements in Africa and the West Indies.

Farrukh Dhondy knew James personally and was given access to his papers. The result is a biography that is a revelation of the life and work of this legendary intellect and revolutionary.

About the Author

Farrukh Dhondy is Commissioning Editor for Multicultural Programs for the BBC. Born in India, he received a B.A. in English from Cambridge University. The author of many acclaimed children’s books, plays, and screenplays, he lives in London.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0297646133
• ISBN 13: 9780297646136
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1