Witchbroom

by Lawrence Scott

Witchbroom is a visionary history of a Caribbean Spanish/French Creole family and an island over four centuries – to 20th-century independence. With an innovative tone and content, its carnival tales of crime and passion are told by the narrator Lavren, who is both male and female. First published in 1992, Witchbroom is a Caribbean classic. The following year it became a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, broadcast over eight nights and read by the author. It was shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best First Book. A pioneering work, it heralded a new generation of modernist Caribbean writers who, like Scott, broke away from a predominantly realist literary tradition; Witchbroom identifies more with magic realism. A richly entertaining and many layered read, its hermaphrodite narrator brings a contemporary flavour to the novel. The title Witchbroom refers to a fungus that attacks cocoa trees, and is also used as a metaphor for the decline of the island's plantocracy.

351 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 5, 1993

About the author

Lawrence Scott is a prize-winning Caribbean novelist and short-story writer from Trinidad & Tobago.

He has been awarded and short-listed for a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book and Best First Book in Canada & the Caribbean, twice Long-Listed for The International Impac Dublin Literary Award, The Whitbread Prize and The Booker Prize. He was awarded the Tom-Gallon Short-Story Award.

His work has stimulated critical work into the post-colonial novel’s use of magic-realism, carnival, calypso, her/history, storytelling, dialect/standard narratives, identity, landscape, the body, race, religion and homo/sexuality.

His work has been performed on the BBC. His poetry has been anthologised in Europe and the Caribbean. He travels frequently in North and South America and the Caribbean and has read, lectured and talked about his work internationally.
Books
Biography
Critical Essays
Bibliography
TV & Radio
He was Writer-in-Residence at the University of the West Indies and was a judge for the 2006 Commonwealth Short-Story Competition.

He is A Senior Research Fellow of The Academy at Unversity of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) for Arts, Letters, Culture and Public Affairs 2006-2009.

He lives and works in both Trinidad and England, writing and teaching literature as well as creative writing at The City Literary Institute in London, The Arvon Foundation and City & Islington Sixth Form College where he taught for many years.

Reviews

[Dylan Killie · Rating 4 out of 5]

No idea what was happening

[bookblast official · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lawrence Scott weaves a magical, lush tapestry of words and images, bringing alive local legends and family narratives; and redressing written histories.

Reviewed on The BookBlast® Diary 2017

[Jerry]

Actually I stopped part way through. It's too metaphorical and (probably) allegorical and a bit creepier than I need right now.

[Eugenia O'Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book!!! Witchbroom is the sweeping epic of Trinidad's history from the time of the conquistadores to the modern-day, told from the perspective of its cynical but always entertaining and often ascerbic hermaphrodite narrator.