Best books set in the Caribbean

The Caribbean is a sea of ​​many mysteries, of color and ghosts, of miscegenation and palm trees. A historical enclave explored several times by literature through these following best books set in the Caribbean.

A house for Mr. Biswas, by VS Naipaul

Published in 1962, the most famous novel of the Nobel Prize Naipaul delves into the identity of the inhabitants of Trinidad and Tobago, a Caribbean country where the arrival of numerous Indian and Chinese immigrants at the end of the XNUMXth century formed a unique melting pot of cultures. In the case of Naipaul, an Indo-Trinidadian, the author collects part of the testimony of his own father to turn it into the story of Mohun Biswas, a humble man married to the daughter of a powerful Indian family whose idea of ​​success ends up in the property of a home. The best reflection of a postcolonial society eager to establish an identity of her own.

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The kingdom of this world, by Alejo Carpentier

Tras his contact with the Baroque and surrealism During his years in Europe, Alejo Carpentier returned to his native Cuba with a backpack loaded with new influences and stories that would forever reinvent Caribbean and Latin American lyrics. The kingdom of this world is the masterpiece of this fusion and of the concept of «lo real marvelous«, Similar but not equal to magical realism, framed in the time of the Haitian revolution seen through the eyes of a slave, Ti Noel, and his contact with the uprisings, evolution and supernatural elements that permeate one of the great novels of the XNUMXth century.

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway was always an inveterate traveler: France, Spain, Africa and, finally, an American continent with which he reconciled, losing himself in places like the Florida Keys or, especially, Cuba. It would be in the Caribbean country where the Nobel Prize would promote his passion for sailing and the sea, for the stories of fishermen that he knew how to capture so well in The old man and the sea, his greatest work. Published in 1952, the story of the old fisherman Santiago and his odyssey to catch the biggest fish his community has ever seen is not only a perfect exercise in suspense, but a great metaphor for a pride that each human being tries to achieve in different ways.

Before nightfall, by Reinaldo Arenas

Much of the stories that came out of Cuba during the second half of the XNUMXth century they alluded to a Cuban Revolution whose consequences struck a generation of intellectuals and thinkers obsessed with fleeing the island of Fidel Castro. One of them, the homosexual writer Reinaldo Arenas, was persecuted for his ideas and sexual orientation until his subsequent transfer to New York City, where he ended up committing suicide in 1990 after years of AIDS. Before his death, Arenas left this book as a testimony, a brutal review of revolutionary Cuba that would be adapted by director Julian Schnabel in 2001 into the homonymous film starring Javier Bardem.

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Love in the Times of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez

Considered as one of the great works of Gabo, Love in the Time of Cholera It was published in 1985 and became an instant best-seller. Set in a city in the Colombian Caribbean that could perfectly be Cartagena de Indias, the novel tells the random love story of Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza, the latter married to Dr. Juvenal Urbino. A story of forbidden passions where the Caribbean, the river cruises of the Magdalena river or the houses of colors and bougainvillea create an exuberant universe that leads us to one of the best endings of literature.

The wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys

Conceived as prequel to the famous novel by Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre, The wide Sargasso Sea It was published in 1966 after years of absence from Dominican-born writer Jean Rhys. The novel, set in the post-colonial Caribbean, tells the story of Antoinette Cosway, a young white Creole trapped between the island customs of Jamaicans and a European patriarchy to which she succumbs after marrying and moving to England. From then on, various rumors begin to circulate about a woman who went crazy and ended up locked in an attic. The novel meant everything a bestseller and received unanimous applause from a reviewer that he finally recognized Rhys's handiwork.

The goat party, by Mario Vargas Llosa

During years, the greatest dictator in the Caribbean was Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, maximum leader a Dominican Republic subjected to the whims of the government during the 50s and until the assassination of Trujillo in May 1961. A review of the island's history through three perspectives: that of the dictator himself, that of his murderers and that of a young Dominican who returns to the island in the 90s to fight her demons. Published in 2000, The party of the goatnot only became one of the great works of Mario Vargas Llosa but also of contemporary Latin American literature.

A Brief History of Seven Murders, by Marlon James

Winner of the Booker Prize in 2015, Brief history of seven murders It is an immersion in that dark Caribbean of the second half of the XNUMXth century where mafia gangs and drug traffickers converged. A set of influences performed by the band Shower posse, which began to wreak havoc in Jamaica after the country's independence in 1962 to expand to the United States and end up establishing the crack empire. A trip to the recent history of Jamaica where there is no shortage of references to personalities such as Bob Marley, a singer who received a visit from seven gunmen at his home two days before the celebration of the Smile Jamaica concert through which the artist "No woman, no cry" tried to appease a troubled country.