Kingston Noir
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Subverts the simplistic sunshine/reggae/spliff-smoking image of Jamaica at almost every turn . . . with a rich interplay of geographies and themes.” —Los Angeles Times
From Trench Town to Half Way Tree to Norbrook to Portmore and beyond, the stories of Kingston Noir shine light into the darkest corners of this fabled city.
Joining award-winning Jamaican authors such as Marlon James, Leone Ross, and Thomas Glave are two “special guest” writers with no Jamaican lineage: Nigerian-born Chris Abani and British writer Ian Thomson. The menacing tone that runs through some of these stories is counterbalanced by the clever humor in others, such as Kei Miller’s “White Gyal with a Camera,” who softens even the hardest of August Town’s gangsters; and Mr. Brown, the private investigator in Kwame Dawes’s story, who explains why his girth works to his advantage: “In Jamaica a woman like a big man. She can see he is prosperous, and that he can be in charge.”
Together—with more contributions from Patricia Powell, Colin Channer, Marcia Douglas, and Christopher John Farley—the outstanding tales in Kingston Noir comprise the best volume of short fiction ever to arise from the literary wellspring that is Jamaica.
“Thoroughly well-written stories . . . fans of noir will enjoy this batch of sordid tales set in the sweltering heat of the tropics.” —Publishers Weekly
“An eclectic and gritty mélange of tales that sears the imagination . . . Kingston Noir proves its worth as a quintessential piece of West Indian literature—rich, artistic, timeless, and above all, draped in unmistakable realism.” —The Gleaner (Jamaica)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Akashic's latest in its series of city-specific noir anthologies (beginning with Brooklyn Noir and eventually moving overseas to include Moscow, Haiti, and many more) explores Kingston's "turbulent dynamics, the way its boundaries of color, class, race, gender, ideology, and sexual privilege crisscross like storm-tangled power lines" through 11 original stories. Editor and Kingston native Channer lays out his perception of his hometown's culture, which he likens to that of New Orleans, "its cultural cousin on the Mississippi," in his too-brief introduction (which could use some background history regarding Jamaican crime writers) as "liquor-loving, music-maddened, seafood-smitten, class-addicted," and that image comes through loud and clear in these thoroughly well-written stories. Of them all, Kei Miller's powerful "The White Gyal with the Camera," about a na ve photographer's sojourn in one of the city's grittiest neighborhoods, August Town, is most likely to linger in readers' memories. The collection, which features many stories that seem to stop before they're finished, doesn't live up to Channer's hope that it be "nothing less than a classic," but fans of noir will still enjoy this batch of sordid tales set in the sweltering heat of the tropics.
