Customer Reviews

The Children of Sisyphus (Longman Caribbean Writers Series)

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In the years following the first publication of Orlando Patterson's novel it has become a classic, to the extent that it is now required reading in Jamaican secondary schools. Set in the shantytown slums of Kingston in the late nineteen fifties, Patterson's charcterizations of the people at the very bottom of Jamiacan society have great power -- as reggae star Dennis Brown once sang, their story is "the half that's never been told". Following a group of Jamaica's poorest, most humble "sufferers" in their search for deliverance, the author brings to life a Jamaica that is a universe away from most American images of the Caribbean as a beautiful beach with a happy reggae soundtrack. As someone who has visited Jamaica many times, I loved this this book and highly recommend it to anyone who would enjoy an unusual novel from a different cultural perspective, and/or those who may be interested in Jamaican/Caribbean culture and the roots of the rastafarian/black identity movement.

Orlando Patterson's Children of Sisyphus set the standard for social realism in Caribbean fiction. He does not romanticize the lives of the poor, nor does he damn them with neglect;rather, he gives their lives dignity.
This is the moral tightrope that all Third World writers face: the choice between compassion and brutal honesty. Patterson succeeds in this fine portrayal of the lives of the poor that is imbued with grace, despite their mean existence.

I read this book first in 1987, just when it was published. It?s almost 20 years later now and the book still lingers on my mind. I have recommended it to many people since. My piece of book is a lot of loose pages......I wonder if it?s a print mistake, but on the website it says the price is 99,- (!)US $ for it? No matter, if you have 99 $ and this is the nowadays price fi it.....buy it! It?s worthwhile and sooooooooooooooooooooo touching......it still moves me from deep within.