I propose to suggest something about the nature of the modern West Indian novel (limiting myself to the island writers and excluding British Guiana), and I want to show something about how it relates to the particular soil from which it springs. Of course, the West Indian novel shares certain trends—critical candor, for instance—with modern fiction throughout the world. Nevertheless, there is something fascinatingly different and distinct about this group of writers. In one sense, West Indian writing has arrived. It no longer follows the earlier line of derivative imitative literature that was alien to our culture both in theme and style. It is, on the contrary, responding with sensitivity to certain compulsions that arise from socio-historic actuality.
The sense of humor which imparts a certain lightheartedness to this writing; the frankness of it; its raciness of style; the peasant interest; the almost complete absence of an “African” theme or, for that matter, of an “Indian” theme—and, as a corollary to this, the theme of racial and cultural synthesis; the social criticism and the analysis which such criticism necessitates, and in general the sociological nature of this writing: these are its dominant aspects. And I see as the compelling reason for all these elements, shared by most of our novelists, the historical drama played out in the Caribbean over the past 300 years or so.
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