Arrival of the Snake-Woman: and other stories - Softcover

Senior, Olive

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1894770536 ISBN 13: 9781894770538

Publisher: TSAR Publications, 2009

Synopsis

The Toronto author Olive Senior's Jamaican birthplace provides the setting for these powerfully engaging stories that span a period of roughly 150 years, from the closing days of slavery in 1838 to the 1980s. The tensions wrought by rapid change and conflicting loyalties are at the heart of these stories, most beautifully evoked in the novella Arrival of the Snake-Woman. Here a young boy narrates the seminal event of his childhood in the late nineteenth century: the coming of a lonely Indian indentured woman into a mountain village. Senior's stories are leavened with wit and humour and the intricate play with language; her characters emerge as triumphant examples of the human spirit unravelling the complex weave of race, class, and cultural and ethnic identity. The First Canadian Edition, Arrival of the Snake-Woman contains some of Olive Senior's masterpieces. A new edition is a cause for celebration." - H Nigel Thomas, from the Afterword

"Arrival of the Snake-Woman has consilidated (Olive Senior's) reputation as one of the most accomplished writers of short fiction and as one of the Caribbeans finest creative minds." - Caribbean Week

About this title

About the Author

Olive Senior is one of Canada's most internationally recognised and acclaimed writers. Amongst her many awards and honours she has won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and F.G. Bressani Literary Award, and was runner up for the Casa de Las Americas Prize and the Pat Lowther Award. In 2003, she received the Norman Washington Manley Foundation Award for Excellence (preservation of cultural heritage - Jamaica). Her body of published work includes four books of poetry, three collections of short stories and several award-winning non-fiction works on Caribbean culture.

Review

"The Jamaican society provides Olive Senior an endless font of material for her creative hand to mould. The style she writes in is consistently delightful and easy to read, so easy indeed, that the unsuspecting reader runs the risk of forgetting the deep and sometimes dreadful concerns to which she would point her audience. We look forward to several other collections from this mistress of short fiction."
--Journal of West Indian Literature

About this edition

• Publisher: TSAR Publications
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1894770536
• ISBN 13: 9781894770538
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176