Season of Adventure

by George Lamming

First published in 1960, Season of Adventure details the story of Fola, a light-skinned middle-class girl who has been tipped out of her easy hammock of social privilege into the complex political and cultural world of her recently independent homeland, the Caribbean island of San Cristobal. After attending a ceremony of the souls to raise the dead, she is carried off by the unrelenting accompaniment of steel drums onto a mysterious journey in search of her past and of her identity. Gradually, she is caught in the crossfire of a struggle between people who have "pawned their future to possessions" and those "condemned by lack of learning to a deeper truth." The music of the drums sounds throughout the novel, "loud as gospel to a believer's ears," and at the end stands alone as witness to the tradition which is slowly being destroyed in the name of European values.
Whether through literary production or public pronouncements, George Lamming has explored the phenomena of colonialism and imperialism and their impact on the psyche of Caribbean people. First published in 1960, Season of Adventure reveals not only these themes, but involves the reader in the analysis of the forms and discourses of resistance employed by the region's people in the course of reproducing their social existence.
George Lamming was born in Barbados, resides in London and teaches regularly in American universities. He is the author of In the Castle of My Skin, Natives of my Person, The Emigrants, and The Pleasures of Exile, also available from the University of Michigan Press.

368 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 1999

About the author

George Lamming was born in the Caribbean island of Barbados on June 8, 1927. He attended The Combermere School which has produced other Barbadian literary icons including Frank Collymore and Austin Clarke. He left that island for Trinidad in 1946, teaching school until 1950. He then emigrated to England where, for a short time, he worked in a factory. In 1951 he became a broadcaster for the BBC Colonial Service. He entered academia in 1967 as a writer-in-residence and lecturer in the Creative Arts Centre and Department of Education at the University of the West Indies.

Since then, he has has served as a Visiting Professor and Writer-in-Residence at the City University of New York. He has worked as a faculty member and lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Pennsylvania. He has also served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Duke University and a Visiting Professor of Africana Studies and Literary Arts at Brown University. In addition to his American teaching and lecturing experience, Lamming has also taught or lectured at universities in Tanzania, Denmark, and Australia.

Reviews

[Saxon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The idea of steel drums as a metaphor for social and cultural revolution in a fictional Caribbean nation certainly peaked my interested. Unfortunately, there is a rift between the thoughts and actions of Lamming's characters who seem to have much more complex and intricate internal struggles than their actions in the book would suggest. This is further highlighted by Lamming's almost flowery prose when delving into the psyche of each character.

Good story but not sure the goal Lamming set out to achieve was reached.