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George Lamming

In the Castle of My Skin

  • In the Castle of My Skin

  • 'They won't know you, the you that's hidden somewhere in the castle of your skin'

    Nine-year-old G. leads a life of quiet mischief crab catching, teasing preachers and playing among the pumpkin vines. His sleepy fishing village in 1930s Barbados is overseen by the English landlord who lives on the hill, just as their 'Little England' is watched over by the Mother Country. Yet gradually, G. finds himself awakening to the violence and injustice that lurk beneath the apparent order of things. As the world he knows begins to crumble, revealing the bruising secret at its heart, he is spurred ever closer to a life-changing decision. Lyrical and unsettling, George Lamming's autobiographical coming-of-age novel is a story of tragic innocence amid the collapse of colonial rule.

    'Rich and riotous' The Times

    'Its poetic imaginative writing has never been surpassed' Tribune

Penguin Modern Classics

1274 Books

George Lamming is a Barbados-born novelist, essayist, and poet. Currently Honorary Professor at the Errol Barrow Centre for the Creative Imagination at the University of the West Indies, Lamming has taught at universities around the world, including posts of Distinguished Visiting Professor at Duke University and Visiting Professor at Brown University. His books include The Emigrants (1954), Of Age and Innocence (1958), and The Pleasures of Exile (1960).

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