Salt - Softcover

Earl-lovelace

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571192947 ISBN 13: 9780571192946

Publisher: Faber Paperbacks, 1998

Synopsis

After 19 years of teaching his pupils to emigrate, Alford George, elitist schoolteacher turned populist politician, is forced to work out a welcome for the diverse races of Trinidad to their own island and how to liberate those who, despite emancipation, are still struggling under old captivities.

About this title

Review

What a terrific book this is! It begins with an opening of mythic import where Guineau John, ancestor of black people, tucks two corncobs under his arms and flies home to Africa. His descendants, too heavy to fly because they have eaten salt, remain on the island of Trinidad, the novel's setting. The book is peopled with memorable characters, such as Alford George, an awkward, ungainly boy who does not speak till he is 6, spends his days reading, and grows up to be a schoolteacher and then politician. One of Lovelace's central concerns, expressed early in the first chapter, is how to deal with freedom after centuries of oppression. But this is no humorless polemic; it is a living, breathing novel, peopled with recognizable characters wrestling with all-too-human dilemmas.

From the Back Cover

Set in Trinidad, the story is launched by the mythical tale of Guinea John, an ancestor of Blackpeople, who put two corn cobs under his arm pits and flew from a clifftop, away from the scene of his enslavement, back to Africa. His descendants have eaten salt, grown too heavy to fly, and cannot follow him. They are left to wrestle with their future on the island. Now, more than one hundred years after "Emancipation", like all the people who share the island - Asians, Africans, and Europeans - they need to be weaned from old captivities and welcomed into the New World. Addressing the challenge of this liberating welcome are Alford George, schoolteacher turned politician; Bango Durity, laborer and activist; and a swirl of unforgettable men and women - minor characters of major proportions - telling their stories in their own voices; all striving with passion and wit to make sense of their lives in the still-young country where the roles of enslaved and landowner still linger, but "the sky, the sea, every green leaf and tangle of vines sing freedom".

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571192947
• ISBN 13: 9780571192946
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288