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Dereck C. Sale
Author
Exiles at Home - Jamaican Chronicles

Beginning around the middle of the last century when, after centuries of colonization, Jamaica began moving to cut its ties to England, many Jamaicans, especially those of the old establishment, became nervous about the island's future and their place in a newly constituted sovereign state. During two decades following Independence, their fears-real or imagined-were either realized or seemed about to be. In either case, the alternative for them was to leave or prepare to leave the island, with the hope of finding a continuation of their former lives abroad. A generation of them did, some with more difficulty than others, but until they departed Jamaica, they were exiles at home. The five pieces in this book are fictional stories. The first four are set in Jamaica; the fifth, in anticipation of the main theme, is set in England.

Reviews
Professor Greg Nixon, University of Northern British Columbia

Review of Exiles at Home – Jamaican Chronicles 

This is a beautiful looking and, more important, beautifully written little book. Looking at the title and the drawing of the Jamaican estate, I tended to anticipate a breezy memoir of a more ordered time in Jamaica to which some uninformed but politically correct individuals might refer as colonial. Exiles at Home is nothing of the sort: it is literature in the first degree. The short tales are written in a smooth, dialogue style that lets the varied characters speak for themselves (often in their own vernacular) yet keeps the reader turning the pages in anticipation of the unfolding events of the plot. And it is certainly not set just in Jamaica but spreads its literary and human scions out to England, Canada, and with links to places further still. Each story is complete as it stands, yet all stories are linked by their connection to the same families or locations in Jamaica. Despite the elegant prose, these stories delve into dark places, both historically and in the human soul. And it is in the human soul that Dereck Sale does his most stirring investigations. On the surface, many of the major characters are deceptively simple, certainly not always likeable, and struggling to survive or maintain a façade of dignity. However, most of these characters are deeply wounded souls with tragedy following them like shadows. It is in these fine portraits of real lives being lived over seas of unspoken emotion that this book becomes truly a work of art and not one I will soon forget.

Professor Greg Nixon, University of Northern British Columbia 

December 18, 2014

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