The lushness of language and the landscape, wild contrasts, and pure storytelling magic abound in this anthology of Caribbean writing. Steeped in the tradition of fabulism, where the irrational and inexplicable coexist with the realities of daily life, the stories in this collection are infused with a vitality and freshness that most writing traditions have long ago lost. From spectral slaving ships to women who shed their skin at night to become owls, stories from writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Marcia Douglas, Ian MacDonald, and Kamau Brathwaite pulse with rhythms, visions, and the tortured history of this spiritually rich region of the world.

Table of Contents:

’Membah
Marcia Douglas, “What the Periwinkle Remember” [from Madam Fate]
Wilson Harris, “Yurokon”
Tobias S. Buckell, “Spurn Babylon”

Science
Roger McTair, “Just a Lark (or the Crypt of Matthew Ashdown)”
Claude-Michel Prévost, “Tears for Érsulie Frèda: Men without Shadow”

Blood Thicker More Than Water
H. Nigel Thomas, “The Village Cock” [“How Loud Can the Village Cock Crow?”]
Ismith Khan, “Shadows Move in the Britannia Bar”
Jamaica Kincaid, “My Mother”

The Broad Dutty Water
Olive Senior, “Mad Fish”
Opal Palmer Adisa, “Widows’ Walk”
Pamela Mordecai, “Once on the Shores of the Stream Senegambia”

Crick Crack
Lillian Allen, “In the Beginning”
Geoffrey Philp, “Uncle Obadiah and the Alien”
Robert Antoni, “My Grandmother’s Tale of the Buried Treasure and How She Defeated the King of Chacachacari and the Entire American Army with Her Venus-Flytraps”
Ian McDonald, “Pot O’ Rice Horowitz’s House of Solace”

Down Inside the Chute
Nalo Hopkinson, “Glass Bottle Trick”
Antonio Benítez-Rojo, “Buried Statues”
Camille Hernandez-Ramdwar, “Soma”

Dream
Kamau Brathwaite, “My Funny Valentine”
marina ama omowale maxwell, “Devil Beads”