No Pain Like This Body

No Pain Like This Body

The forgotten classic masterpiece of Trinidadian literature

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

With an introduction by Monique Roffey - this is her favourite book by a
Trinidadian novelist.

Set in the Eastern Caribbean at the beginning of the twentieth century, No Pain Like this Body describes the perilous existence of a poor rice-growing family during the August rainy season. Their struggles to cope with illness, a drunken and unpredictable father, and the violence of the elements end in unbearable loss.

Through vivid, vertiginous prose, and with brilliant economy and originality, Ladoo creates a fearful world of violation and grief, in the face of which even the most despairing efforts to endure stand out as acts of courage.

'A masterpiece of hurt' The New York Times

© Harold Sonny Ladoo 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Reviews

  • I have read the book several times and it is my favourite novel written by a Trinidadian novelist hands down. It deserves to be known
    Monique Roffey, Independent

About the author

Harold Sonny Ladoo

Harold Sonny Ladoo was born in Trinidad in 1945 and emigrated to Toronto in 1968 with his wife and two children. In 1972 he graduated from the University of Toronto and his first novel, No Pain Like This Body, was published, earning Ladoo immediate recognition as a new literary talent. The following year he returned to Trinidad to settle a land dispute but was murdered. He was just twenty-eight. His second novel, Yesterdays, was published posthumously in 1974.
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