While Gods Are Falling

by Earl Lovelace

Exposing the political and cultural failure to address the challenges of postcolonial Trinidad, this insightful novel portrays a world where the working man must face the crime and violence that is destroying the social body. Walter Castle is dissatisfied with his regular job in the Laventille slum in Port of Spain. As the prospect of * is bleak and crime and lawless youth become insupportable, he dreams of going back to the village community he grew up in. Unfortunately, the force of nostalgia is not supported by actual memories and as Walter abandons his dreams he is forced to choose between turning into a drone who passes through life without leaving a mark, or standing up for himself. Originally published in 1965, this story remains surprisingly contemporary with its astringent critique of the top-down authoritarianism of nationalist politics.

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Novelist, playwright and short-story writer Earl Lovelace was born in Toco, Trinidad in 1935 and grew up in Tobago. He worked for the Trinidad Guardian, then for the Department of Forestry and later as an agricultural assistant for the Department of Agriculture, gaining an intimate knowledge of rural Trinidad that has informed much of his fiction.

He studied in the United States at Howard University, Washington (1966-7) and received his MA in English from Johns Hopkins University in 1974. In 1980 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and spent that year at the University of Iowa. After teaching at a number of other American universities, Lovelace returned to Trinidad in 1982, where he now lives and writes, teaching at the University of the West Indies. A collection of his plays, Jestina's Calypso and Other Plays, was published in 1984.

His first novel, While Gods Are Falling, was published in 1965 and won the British Petroleum Independence Literary Award. It was followed by The Schoolmaster (1968), about the impact of the arrival of a new teacher in a remote community. His third novel, The Dragon Can't Dance (1979), regarded by many critics as his best work, describes the rejuvenating effects of carnival on the inhabitants of a slum on the outskirts of Port of Spain. In The Wine of Astonishment (1982) he examines popular religion through the story of a member of the Baptist Church in a rural village. His most recent novel, Salt, was published in 1996 and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book) in 1997. Set in Trinidad, the book explores the legacy of colonialism and slavery and the problems still faced by the country through the story of Alford George, a teacher turned politician.

Reviews

[Shane Rajiv · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn’t a book I heard so much about, compared to his other work Salt, The Schoolmaster etc. What surprised me the most about the book is its focus on the waywardness of young men and the collapse of society, due to the increase in violence. The book was written in the early 1960s, and now in the early 2020s, Trinidad is much much worse from a crime point of view. It’s Ironic and disheartening to think things have only got much worse and how small scale the level of crime must have been in comparison and yet it is as such a focus.
There are some beautiful themes in there, that you don’t make the world, not to be too judgemental, and maybe to help improve society you need to show the bad johns and the like, that people and society care, and to allow them a part in it.

[Gillena Cox]

I read The Peepal Tree publication with an introduction by Dillion Brown.

Walter Castle prodded by his wife makes a complete turn around from a man of despair to one of hope in community consciousness and helping others in need. In encouraging a community to care, when everything seems to be ripping at the seams.

[Morefiiyaa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read from a classical caribbean author. Great story teller and its issues regarding city life and the wayward ness and characterization of the younger generation is just as relevant today as when it was written.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to this book through a graduate student in my department who is studying and writing his doctoral dissertation on the work of Earl Lovelace. I've had so many conversations with this student about his subject of study that I became more and more drawn to figure out what this Lovelace was all about. So, I decided this summer to pick up this first novel by Lovelace and give it a go. Stylistically and linguistically, I have to say that I found the book to be enchanting. It is my first exposure to Anglophone Caribbean literature, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It starts out with a scene that is none too appealing and even somewhat discouraging, but I think this is absolutely necessary to evoke the kind of mood that Lovelace wants to envelop the whole rest of the story and to give meaning to the redemptive discovery that unfolds as the novel progress.

Even though this is a book written in 1960 and is Earl Lovelace's first novel, I thought the content and the narrative structure to be relevant even today, some 50 plus years after its original publication. The hero of the novel, Walter Castle, is at first a very unsympathetic and surly character, full of intelligence, but also full of resentment and disappointment at the world in which he has to live. The novel actually takes place over the course of a 48 hour period, but there are extended flashbacks over this period into the history of Walter Castle's life. And in this 48 hour period, even through these flashbacks, there is a kind of epiphany that converts Walter Castle from an angry, resentful man, to a man of hope and determination for the better. The positive, hopeful ending is a bit abrupt and seemingly out of character, but I still think it works because of the narrative structure that Lovelace uses to bring us to the point where we can see why Walter would have such an epiphany. It's a commentary on poverty and alienation in the underdeveloped Caribbean, but also a commentary on community and the "good fight." I came to like Walter in the end, and I didn't think I could. But the themes that resonated in 1960 in this novel still resonate today. I know for sure that I will be reading more of Lovelace's work in the future.