Michael Anthony

Michael Anthony sets this novel in Rio de Janeiro, at a time when a wave of student riots hit the city. At the centre of the story is Marisa, who teaches at a language school run by a Trinidadian called Mac. Through Marisa, two young visitors to Rio are drawn into awareness of the city’s life. Craig, who has come to see his lonely old uncle falls in love with her at once, but he is too young to handle love and a new country successfully. Alvin has a better understanding of life and allows his relationship with Marisa to develop more slowly and naturally. Instead of meeting as `interesting foreigners’ they are two people with much in common and it is such that they live through the turbulent events which are to come. The city holds a different kind of fate for Mac, who espouses the students’ cause. Through their friendship with him, Marisa and Alvin are taken new the centre of the whirlpool; but secure in their own love and hopes, they are not carried away. Left with an uneasy poignant memory of a friend who attempted to live on a larger scale, they can be sure that their own quiet adherence to private values represents the saner way.

This story is about Trinidadian family, the Broomleys. The parents do not approve of the Carnival spirits, but their son Alan makes secret plans to take part in a big Carnival competition on the Savannah in Port of Spain. The Story is mostly seen through the eyes of Letitia, the maid who is half-fearful at being found out, half excited a t being witness of Alan’s secret preparations to compete in the competition. Alan appears on the big day disguised as the Fool in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Leon had only bought his Wasp cycle because cycling had been the new craze and all his friends had been taking it up. Two years later however, it was his prized possession and his whole ambition lay on the cycle track. He was consumed, and cycling had become the most precious thing to him. The Games Were Coming chronicles Leon’s life in the three months preceding the Southern Games, held in Marabella, Southern Trinidad. Focused and unwavering, not even the infectious Carnival Spirit which takes hold of Leon’s young brother, Dolphus, nor the advances of Silvia, Leon’s girlfriend, can steer the determined young cyclist away from his preparation for the games. Feeling rejected, Sylvia becomes inextricably involved with another man and resorts to a devious plan involving young Leon to save herself. Set in Michael Anthony’s homeland Trinidad, and written in his trademark simple yet elegant style, this coming of age story has it all: ambition, love and the loss of innocence – all of the angst of that transition to young adulthood, as relevant today as it was when the novel was first published in 1963.

A collection of folk and fantasy stories. It also includes illustrations that accompany each story.

Kid Fearless has two fights to worry about. There is his upcoming boxing bout with Young Tiger, who is expected to eat the inexperienced Kid raw. And then there is the fight by Trinidad's oilfield workers for better wages and conditions. It is this second fight that preoccupies Kid Fearless, also known as Hothead, but whose real name is Jason. This fight is led by the Grenadian Uriah Butler, and Jason is Butler's right-hand man and bodyguard. Jason and his wife Elma care for Butler as if he was family. Like their fellow workers, they believe that Butler is the only man who can stand up to the exploitative oilfield management, and even the British government, to win them all a fairer living wage. However, Butler can be rash, needing to be protected from his own actions as much as from those of his enemies in the oilfields, in the oil cartel and among the informers and policemen such as the infamous Charlie King. But Butler, Elma and the Kid find help and support from unexpected sources.