Books by country North America
Four books by writers from Saint Kitts and Nevis, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with A State of Independence and Only God Can Make a Tree.
Saint Kitts and Nevis has few internationally published writers, and its best known, Caryl Phillips, was born in Saint Kitts and raised in England. English is the official language of the federation, which became independent from Britain in 1983. Sugar and slavery shaped the islands' past, and much of their writing returns to that history. Phillips's A State of Independence follows an emigrant who comes home on the eve of independence to an island modelled on Saint Kitts.
Bertram Roach, from Nevis, set Only God Can Make a Tree on a sugar estate in the early twentieth century, where a mixed-race man must choose between love and social standing. Two memoirs show island life from the inside: Christopher Vanier's Caribbean Chemistry: Tales from St Kitts recalls a childhood in Basseterre, and Clement Williams's My Early Life on St Kitts and Nevis covers his first 22 years on the islands.
A returning emigrant faces a newly independent small Caribbean island, echoing Saint Kitts's 1983 independence, with themes of migration, belonging and post-colonial disillusionment.
A Basseterre-born engineer remembers his childhood and schooldays on St Kitts.
An autobiography of the author's first 22 years growing up on the islands.
A first-person account of everyday island life in St Kitts, seen through years of teaching there, with local people, habits and quirks.
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