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Customer Reviews (8)

Coming of Age in a Strange World
Lamming's "coming of age" novel depicts the life of a precocious adolescent, G, who is trying to understand the colonial, grown-up world. The innocence of G is balanced against the decadence of his environment. Read also, Michael Anthony's The Year in San Fernando and Austin Calrke's, Growing Up Stupid Under Union Jack to fully understand Lamming's achievement.

A brilliant modern Caribbean masterpiece!
George Lamming, along with other Caribbean writers such as V.S. Naipaul and V.S. Reid, broke through the Victorian box of post-World War II, pre-independence British colonial writing.Their styles are all different but their message is generally the same: trying to grapple with the major issues of politics, race, and self-worth.Lamming's description of G's life (which can be paralleled to James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man") draws the reader into the decadent colonial world of the pre-World War II Barbados.Lamming's style haunts and amuses but ultimately almost confuses; read this carefully to understand the true meaning of the book.

"a must read"
The more I attempt to say about Mr Lamming's beautifully descriptive and uniquely refreshing style the more disservice I do to this marvelous work.If you have a Carribean, colonial or post colonial experience asI do, this novel is what they call "a must read".It evoked memories and thoughts in me long forgotten.You will find yourself laughing out aloud - which I did continuously on the E train to the point where I am sure my fellow riders thought me a lunatic.Above all this novel conveys a truth about the way we lived and live.It examines the march of time and the complexities and consequences of change and transition from the perspective of a Caribbean village.I am writing this as I search ... for more of Lamming's works.

Growing aware of the Castle
"In the Castle of my Skin" is a highly poetic account of growing up in the black community of Barbadoes. Lamming gives us a vivid picture of G's family, his friends, his school and village life. Interwoven with G'severyday experience is his awareness of what it means being black and beingpoor in a somehow secluded island community. Lamming's teatment of racismis sober and sensitive. It's the more effective because it shows howinseparable its perception is from the growing awareness a young black boyhas of himself. There is much more violence in this as in many a bloodybattle. In it's poetic language,the vividness of its characters andscenery,the deep psychological insight and the sober and just treatment ofthe growing awareness of differences in the context of Carribean historythis novel is a masterpiece of universal literature.It certainly can beread as "the portrait of a young artist"; The reference of themain character's initial to Lamming's first name George seems prettyobvious. But if a portrait, its an excellent one!

How Barbados came of age
George Lamming's "In the Castle of My Skin"skilfully depicts the Barbadian psyche.Set against the backdrop of the 1930s riots which helped to pave the way for Independence and the modern Barbados, throughthe eyes of a young boy, Lammingportrays the social, racial,politicaland urban struggles with which Barbados continues to grapple even with some thirty-three years of Political Independence from Britain.Requiredreading for all Caribbean people.The novel also offers non-Barbadians andnon-Caribbean peopleinsight into the modern social history of Barbadosand the Caribbean. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Immigration and Loss of Identity
In Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe narrates the disruptive effect European colonisation has on old tribal ways of life. In George Lamming's The Emigrants (1954)the movement is the other way round: a group of WestIndians immigrates to London in search of a better future. During thevoyage on the ship, told as a kind of rite of passage from their old to thenew world, they share past experiences, dreams, hopes and ambitions. Thevoyage however doesn't prepare them for the life of outcasts that awaitsthem in London, and the subsequent loss of identity. The form of thenarrative adjusts itself to its theme: its continuous flow, which narratesthe voyage, breaks up into several trails following the individualdestinies that lose themselves in the smoke of London. Though not as greatas In The Castle of my Skin, which I think Mr. Lamming's greatest novel, itis an intense book about immigration, cultural chock and loss of identity. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Wouldn't have read it if it weren't required
This book was interesting and well written, weaving the themes of slavery and oppression with the characters of a Shakespeare play. Although I admire the author's perseverence with the theme, I found it tiring and often hard to get into. I read it for a class and can't say I would've given it a second glance otherwise. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of George (William) Lamming, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 2456 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description

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Why choose "Novels For Students"? Because no other source offers so much in such a compact package. Trust the experts: Thomson Gale--and "Novels for Students." ... Read more

Book Description
This book offers a timely critique of the work of the Barbadian novelist George Lamming, examining the ways in which his novels exhibit the "luxury of nationalist despair" and exploring the tensions between his strongly voiced anti-colonialism and his ambiguously articulated politics of self. Although stressing the place occupied by Lamming and his work in the context of an anti-colonial first generation of 'nation-writing' that has emerged in the formerly colonized world over the past half-century, the study also addresses the novelist's problematic, reductive focus on a nationalist project that is ultimately deeply flawed - in essence, the result of an uneasy relationship between form and thesis. Lamming's continued struggle with the novel as a genre, especially with its ability to get beyond the cultural and political baggage of colonialism, demonstrates the power of one of his most poignant assertions: "the colonial experience [...] is a continuing psychic experience that has to be dealt with long after the actual situation formally 'ends'."
Written from a postcolonial perspective, the study draws also on contemporary feminist criticism in order to examine Lamming's characteristically simplistic depiction of female characters in terms of a greater willingness to embody the neocolonial. The book starts by addressing the place Lamming's work occupies both within postcolonial writing at large and specifically within Caribbean literature. Subsequent chapters provide close textual readings of Lamming's six novels, paired in terms of their foregrounding of issues of race, gender and class. Despite a clear shift in Lamming's thematic focus on the rewriting of Caliban's project, with his last novel offering a basis for a re-imagining of the post/colonial encounter, there remains a perturbing inability to relinquish the privileged stance afforded the postcolonial intellectual in self-imposed exile (cultural, much more than geographical). The book represents an important contribution to criticism on the work of one of the most influential voices in postcolonial literature of the last fifty years. ... Read more

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8.1" * 5.4". Cloth hardcover. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

One of the most influential books of my life!
Provides a powerful and insightful analysis on racism and colonization.Through his characters, Lamming paints a clear picture that allows us to see how racism not only affects its victims, but how it is also perpetuatedby its victims. This book explains how and why "sellouts,""Uncle Toms" and "Tio Tacos" exist. ... Read more

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Monographs in original English with French translation (essays on history, culture; Western/Caribbean intellectual tradition; critical analysis. Translation by Daniella Jeffry), Second printing (c) 2000. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

A haunting novel
This is the story of a group of West Indian artists in London.It's frightening because it's West Indian.The violence of it's action, far from catering to a mindless sensationalism, works in the service of a fictional imagination that's deeply political. ... Read more