"EMMANUEL APPADOCCA; or, BLIGHTED LIFE"

by Maxwell Philip ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1997

Subtitled ""A Tale of the Boucaneers,"" this long-forgotten 1854 novel was the only fiction produced by its otherwise famous author, a Trinidadian Creole (1829-88) who became a successful attorney and an eloquent critic of the evil of slavery. It's an impassioned romance whose eponymous hero, outraged by his wealthy white father's desertion of his mulatto mother, joins a pirate ship and undertakes a lifelong assault on the conventions of wealth and property. Arguably (as its editors claim) ""the first Caribbean novel,"" Emmanuel Appadocca is, by turns, discursive, melodramatic, suffused with rhetorical energy, and reflective of its creator's fine sardonic intelligence. It's no masterpiece, but it undoubtedly belongs in the canon.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997

ISBN: 1150659807

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Univ. of Massachusetts

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997

Categories: FICTION