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Omeros
Derek Walcott
Poetry, 1990
An epic poem set among Gros Islet fishermen and Castries, reworking Caribbean colonial history and local island life against St Lucia's landscape.
Books by country North America
Books set in Saint Lucia
Four books by writers from Saint Lucia, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with Omeros and Another Life.
About the literature of Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia is the birthplace of Derek Walcott, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. English is the official language, while Kwéyòl, a French-based Creole, is widely spoken in everyday life. Walcott began as a poet and playwright in the late colonial years and later worked in Trinidad, where he founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in 1959. His epic poem Omeros is set among fishermen in Gros Islet and in Castries, and Another Life is an autobiographical poem about growing up in Castries in the 1930s and 1940s.
Garth St. Omer, a contemporary of Walcott's, wrote fiction about the island's narrow late colonial society, shaped by class, colour, religion and schooling. Nor Any Country follows a young man returning home, and A Room on the Hill portrays disillusioned young people in a small town.
By writers from Saint Lucia
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Another Life
Derek Walcott
Poetry, 1973
An autobiographical poem about growing up in 1930s-40s Castries, showing colonial society, Methodist and Catholic culture, Creole language and the island's landscape.
Nor Any Country
Garth St. Omer
Novel, 1969
A novel of a young St Lucian man's return home, exploring class, colour, ambition and the stifling social order of the late colonial island.
A Room on the Hill
Garth St. Omer
Novel, 1968
A novel of disillusioned young islanders in small-town St Lucia, capturing the constraints of colonial-era class, religion and education.
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