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A poetic approach to revising and re-creating Caribbean mythology on an epic scale, this book-length autobiographical poem in five parts addresses the large themes of the Caribbean experience: history, migration, myth, and domestic love. The different movements vary in style and tone—from blank verse, to terza rima, to heroic couplets—but are unified by the voice of the single narrator, which changes over time. Prefaced by a passage from the Ramayana, the poem begins on the plains of Caroni, where the narrator traces his beginnings, and moves to an overnight bus journey through Europe, a sojourn in Toronto, and an account of a broken marriage, addressed to the narrator’s daughter. The series of poems ends with “The Last Avatar,” a miniepic which recasts the Caribbean as a Hindu eschatological myth and places its heroes as the holy trinity of Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu in Caribbean terms.

Raymond Ramcharitar is a writer, journalist, and cultural critic from Trinidad. He is the author of a controversial study of the Trinidadian media, Breaking the News: Media and Culture in Trinidad, the short story collection The Island Quintet, and the poetry collection American Fall.