Book - BookDetective

Name: Abeng

Author: Michelle Cliff
Year: 1984
Rank:

Rating:

Original Rating:

Pop Rating:

Genres/categories:
Fiction, Historical fiction

Purchase/reserch links:

ISBNs:
9780452274839
0452274834

Ever since Abeng was first published in 1984, Michelle Cliff has steadily become a literary force. Her novels evoke both the clearly delineated hierarchies of colonial Jamaica and the subtleties of present-day island life. Nowhere is her power felt more than in Clare Savage, her Jamaican heroine, who appeared, already grown, in No Telephone to Heaven. Abeng is a kind of prequel to that highly-acclaimed novel and is a small masterpiece in its own right. Here Clare is twelve years old, the light-skinned daughter of a middle-class family, growing up among the complex contradictions of class versus color, blood versus history, harsh reality versus delusion, in a colonized country. In language that surrounds us with a richness of meaning and voices, the several strands of young Clare's heritage are explored: the Maroons, who used the conch shell-the abeng-to pass messages as they fought a guerilla struggle against their English enslavers; and the legacy of Clare's white great-great-grandfather, Judge Savage, who burned his hundred slaves on the eve of their emancipation. A lyrical, explosive coming-of-age story combined with a provocative retelling of the colonial history of Jamaica, this novel is a triumph.

This book is part of the "Clare Savage" series. Here are some other books from this series:

"No Telephone to Heaven"
First published in 1987
Rank:

, Original star rating:

, Adjusted star rating:

, Pop rating: