Salt

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize



'An amazingly vivid and joyful novel.' The Times



'Vital, life-enhancing.' Time Out



Alford, the youngest son of a poor farm worker, has risen above his class to become a schoolteacher. He, like many young people in Trinidad, dreams of heading to England for a better life. Idealistic and determined, Alford travels to the capital to campaign for his community and, suddenly a local hero, it seems anything is possible. Or is it? Salt tells the story of a country through an unforgettable cast of characters, striving with wit and passion to make sense of life in an evolving homeland.



Earl Lovelace is a novelist, playwright, and essayist who lives and works in Trinidad and Tobago. Among many honours and positions, he was most recently the Distinguished Novelist in the Department of English at the Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington (1999-2005), and his schooling includes the Eastern Caribbean Institute of Agriculture and Forestry, Howard University, and Johns Hopkins University from which he holds the Master of Arts degree. His novels include Salt, which won the 1997 Commonwealth Writers Prize, The Dragon Can't Dance (1998), The Wine of Astonishment (1982), The Schoolmaster (1968), and While Gods Are Falling (1965), winner of The British Petroleum Independence Literary Award. His short stories appear in the collection, A Brief Conversion and Other Stories (1988); his selected essays appear in Growing in the Dark (2003); and a film of his story 'Joebell and America' with a screenplay co-authored with his daughter Asha, was produced in September 2004.



Salt is an extraordinary tour de force by one of the pre-eminent literary presences in the Caribbean, a novel which explores like none before it the intermingling of cultures that is the contemporary West Indian experience.