Fugue and Other Writings—Selected Poetry, Short Stories, Autobiographical Prose, and Critical Writing

This collection of work by the late Neville Dawes (1926-1984) makes available the fine poems that Dawes wrote, mostly between 19501970, some of which appeared in a long-vanished, slim volume, Sepia, published in Ghana in the late 1950s. In the poems, the Marxist, modernist, ideologically committed Neville Dawes returns again and again to Sturge Town, the village of his youth, a world of "ancestral rooting". The collection includes the short stories broadcast on the Caribbean Voices radio programme, justly hailed as special events by such stern editors as Edgar Mittelholzer. There are several pieces of autobiographical writing, which in their insight and humour make one wish that Dawes had written much more in this vein.

Lastly there is a section devoted to Neville Dawes's criticism, which reveals him to have been an important and visionary critic on the development of Caribbean writing, the place of Africa in Caribbean culture and the importance of seeing the region whole, across language barriers. Essays on the work of individual writers such as Mittelholzer, Mais, V.S. Reid, Lamming, early Naipaul and Derek Walcott show Dawes as a critic with well-developed ideas about literature in the context of race and class, but also with an acute and generous sensitivity to the literary accomplishments of others.

There is also a long introductory essay by Kwame Dawes that brings both a scholar's carefully objective placement of this work in the context of Jamaican and Caribbean writing, and a son's moving and insightful response to his father's work in relation to the triumphs and frustrations of his life.

Neville Dawes was born in Nigeria in 1926, but grew up in rural Jamaica. He studied for an MA at Oxford (Oriel College), taught in Jamaica, Ghana and Guyana, and was later appointed Director of the Institute of Jamaica. Always a Marxist, he was deeply immersed in Africa, English Literature and his nationalist identification with the rural Jamaican working class. His writing is located within these poles.
Kwame Dawes is the author of over thirty books. He is widely recognised as one of the Caribbean's leading writers. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and a Chancellor's Professor of English at the University of Nebraska.