The Lagahoo's Apprentice

by Rabindranath Maharaj

Trapped in a loveless marriage, Stephen Sagar returns eagerly to his native Trinidad when he is commissioned by a powerful island politician to write his biography. Expecting to discover a lost innocence, Stephen is at once disillusioned - old friends are no longer recognizable and strangers view him with indifference or hostility. To piece together his own past, he explores the lush island landscape and encounters a woman who once loved him. In her need to love again, his own longing begins to awaken and intensify.

Genres: Fiction

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Rabindranath Maharaj was born in the fifties in South Trinidad. He received a B.A., M.A. and Diploma in Education from the University of the West Indies, Saint Augustine. In Trinidad he worked as a teacher and as a columnist for the Trinidad Guardian. In the early 1990s Maharaj moved to Canada and in 1993 he completed a second M.A. at the University of New Brunswick. Since 1994 he has been living in Ajax, Ontario and teaching high school there.Maharaj is now well recognized in Canada for his published fiction and short stories, which tend to deal with everyday situations that challenge and stimulate the lives of men and women from Indo-Caribbean communities in Canada and in Trinidad.
Both the Toronto Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star recognized his literary worth when his book, The Lagahoo’s Apprentice, was published. A previous novel, Homer in Flight, had been nominated for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award.
Two collections of short stories, The Book of Ifs and Buts and The Interloper were nominated for a Regional Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book.
His most recent novel A Perfect Pledge, published in 2005, seems to engage some of the issues and themes that Vidia Naipaul, who was also born in Trinidad, tackled in his earlier novels. Maharaj’s approach, however, is less scathing and dismissive. Although he obviously sees the shortcomings and inadequacies of life in this “now for now” immigrant society of Trinidad, he treats his characters with greater sympathy and with humane understanding.
Rabindranath Maharaj is also one of the founding editors of Lichen a literary magazine that in his own words: “ferrets out new voices, throws the spotlight on recognized ones, and adds to the broth a distinct flavour: a mix of city and country, of tradition and innovation.”

Reviews

[Ghyanne Edwards Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

With Maharaj's descriptive writing, I felt like I was transported into the scenes of Central and South Trinidad. Being from T&T, it felt nostalgic to read how beautifully poetic the writer described his place of birth. Maharaj introduced a lot of real-life themes that affected T&T at the time: Tobago's wrestle for Independence, Black Power Movement, corruption in politics, heavy reflection on race relations but I felt a lot of times like I was being tossed in various directions. As I read further into the book, I didn't feel like some of the many ideas introduced at the beginning of the book were ever fully answered. The moments, I believe were intended to create tension in the book, sometimes fell flat.

A solid read if you yearn for writing that reminds you of Trinidad but be prepared to be tossed in a few directions and finish the book feeling a bit confused and having more questions than answers.