Teeton lives three lives in England--one with a bohemian group of artist exiles, another is his curiously intimate relationship with his landlady, and finally as a secret revolutionary from the Caribbean island of San Cristobal. Thus far, Teeton has kept each aspect of his life separate from one another, but when he returns home and joins an incipient revolt, his once separate worlds begin to fuse together with disastrous results. This novel is a powerful study of the impossibility of disentangling British and Caribbean lives, the nature of misogyny, and the conflict between the calls of art and revolution.

George Lamming is the author of The Emigrants, In the Castle of My Skin, Natives of My Person, Of Age and Innocence, The Pleasures of Exile, and Season of Adventure. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Pennsylvania and a lecturer in Australia, Denmark, and Tanzania.