First published in 1941, this vivid and poetic family saga was the first modern novel to focus on the lives of immigrants from India in the British Caribbean colonies. Set on the coast of British Guiana, the story spans three generations and revolves around Ramgollal, an old Indian cow-minder on the Corentyne coast who has worked hard for many years to save money and build his herd of cows. He is proud of his children from two marriages, particularly the daughter of his first marriage, who is married to a well-to-do white planter. Their son Geoffry is light-skinned, ambitious, and poised to make a success of his life, and Ramgollal takes much satisfaction in his grandson's accomplishments. When Geoffry seduces and impregnates Kattree, his mother's half sister, however, Ramgollal's world begins to fall apart. Soon thereafter, Kattree's sister Beena gets involved with a married man who is subsequently arrested on a murder charge, and Ramgollal despairs over his losses. Despite his struggles to respect tradition and provide for the future, these sordid scandals threaten both Ramgollal's savings and his family's good name.

Exploring the complicated landscape of human interaction within the walls of the offices of Essential Products Ltd., this serious yet comedic novel offers a glimpse into 1940s Trinidad. Against the backdrop of the often hierarchical and always complex office space, characters negotiate issues of sexual attraction and repulsion, their attitude to colonial rule, racial tensions, and the changing labor market of contemporary society. Filled with rich characters and an acute but sympathetic portrayal of a microcosm of middle- and lower-middle-class Trinidad, this satire turns a careful eye to the disparities between the world of the office and wider society.

A haunting ghost story by the 'first West Indian novelist', Edgar Mittelholzer. Only when he is on board the steamer halfway to their remote destination up river in Guyana does Milton Woodsley realise that there is more to Henry Nevinson''s invitation to spend time with his family in their jungle cottage. Milton, an artist, thinks he has been invited to do some paintings for Nevinson, a rich businessman, and possibly be thrust into the company of their daughter, Jessie. But when the Nevinsons mention a flute player that no one else can hear, Woodsley begins to glean that there is more to their stay.Told in Woodsley''s sceptical, self-mocking and good-humoured voice, the tension rises as the cottagers'' sanity and lives are threatened by psychic manifestations whose source they must discover before it overwhelms them.Mittelholzer subtitled his 1955 novel "A Ghost Story in the Old-fashioned Manner", and there is more than a hint of tongue-in-cheek in this thoroughly entertaining work, though it rises to a pitch of genuine terror and has serious things to say about the need to exorcise the crimes of slavery that still echo into the present in the relationship between the light-brown, upper-class Nevinsons and their black servant, Rayburn. Amongst the barks of baboons, rustles of hidden creatures in the remote Berbice forests, Mittelholzer creates a brilliantly atmospheric setting for his characters and their terrified discovery that this is not a place where they can be at home.Edgar Mittelholzer was born in British Guiana in 1909. He wrote more than twenty novels. He eventually settled in England, where he lived until his death in 1965, a suicide predicted in several of his novels.

First published in 1941, this vivid and poetic family saga was the first modern novel to focus on the lives of immigrants from India in the British Caribbean colonies. Set on the coast of British Guiana, the story spans three generations and revolves around Ramgollal, an old Indian cow-minder on the Corentyne coast who has worked hard for many years to save money and build his herd of cows. He is proud of his children from two marriages, particularly the daughter of his first marriage, who is married to a well-to-do white planter. Their son Geoffry is light-skinned, ambitious, and poised to make a success of his life, and Ramgollal takes much satisfaction in his grandson's accomplishments. When Geoffry seduces and impregnates Kattree, his mother's half sister, however, Ramgollal's world begins to fall apart. Soon thereafter, Kattree's sister Beena gets involved with a married man who is subsequently arrested on a murder charge, and Ramgollal despairs over his losses. Despite his struggles to respect tradition and provide for the future, these sordid scandals threaten both Ramgollal's savings and his family's good name.

Exploring the complicated landscape of human interaction within the walls of the offices of Essential Products Ltd., this serious yet comedic novel offers a glimpse into 1940s Trinidad. Against the backdrop of the often hierarchical and always complex office space, characters negotiate issues of sexual attraction and repulsion, their attitude to colonial rule, racial tensions, and the changing labor market of contemporary society. Filled with rich characters and an acute but sympathetic portrayal of a microcosm of middle- and lower-middle-class Trinidad, this satire turns a careful eye to the disparities between the world of the office and wider society.

A haunting ghost story by the 'first West Indian novelist', Edgar Mittelholzer. Only when he is on board the steamer halfway to their remote destination up river in Guyana does Milton Woodsley realise that there is more to Henry Nevinson''s invitation to spend time with his family in their jungle cottage. Milton, an artist, thinks he has been invited to do some paintings for Nevinson, a rich businessman, and possibly be thrust into the company of their daughter, Jessie. But when the Nevinsons mention a flute player that no one else can hear, Woodsley begins to glean that there is more to their stay.Told in Woodsley''s sceptical, self-mocking and good-humoured voice, the tension rises as the cottagers'' sanity and lives are threatened by psychic manifestations whose source they must discover before it overwhelms them.Mittelholzer subtitled his 1955 novel "A Ghost Story in the Old-fashioned Manner", and there is more than a hint of tongue-in-cheek in this thoroughly entertaining work, though it rises to a pitch of genuine terror and has serious things to say about the need to exorcise the crimes of slavery that still echo into the present in the relationship between the light-brown, upper-class Nevinsons and their black servant, Rayburn. Amongst the barks of baboons, rustles of hidden creatures in the remote Berbice forests, Mittelholzer creates a brilliantly atmospheric setting for his characters and their terrified discovery that this is not a place where they can be at home.Edgar Mittelholzer was born in British Guiana in 1909. He wrote more than twenty novels. He eventually settled in England, where he lived until his death in 1965, a suicide predicted in several of his novels.