Salt
Earl Lovelace

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize

Guinea John, mythical ancestor of Blackpeople in Trinidad, put two corncobs under his armpits and flew away from the scene of his enslavement, back to Africa. But his descendants, having eaten salt, were too heavy to fly and would not follow....
One hundred years after official Emancipation, the diverse people of Trinidad—Africa, Asian, and European—still have not settled into the New World. Two men set out to free them from “old captivities” and to welcome them to their island homeland. Around them swirl a cast of unforgettable men and women, each telling his own story in his own voice, each striving with passion and wit to make sense of life in a 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.”

“A novel confident in its rhythms, in the authority of its selling, driven by an exultant compassion for its characters.”
—Derek Walcott

“[Lovelace’s] generous, torrential prose...seems to hold every complexity—of history, of ethnicity, of reason and magic alike—within its rushing energy.”
—The New York Times Book Review

Earl Lovelace was born and still resides in Trinidad. Among his many award-winning books are the novel The Dragon Can't Dance and A Brief Conversion and Other Stories. 

Paperback / $17.95/ ISBN 978-0-89255-235-1 / 260 pages / Fiction