Originally published in 1967, An Absence of Ruins is a poignant portrayal of a man shaped by the colonial education of the Caribbean intellectual class. Orlando Patterson offers a devastating critique of middle-class intellectualism through the self-condemning perceptions of the main character, Alexander Blackman, and the vibrant reality of the world he is unable to embrace--the world of the Jamaican working class. An intensive and inward portrayal of what the world looks like to a man who has been shaped by the deeply entrenched consequences of colonialism, this novel is full of sardonic humor and a nihilism that emerges as a kind of integrity.

Orlando Patterson is the John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and the author of the novels The Children of Sisyphus and Die the Long Day. He is also the author of numerous scholarly works, including Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, for which we won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.