Bøker av Jamaica Kincaid

Celebrating Fifty Years of Picador BooksIn this acclaimed travel memoir Jamaica Kincaid chronicles a spectacular and exotic three-week trek through the Himalayan land of Nepal, where she and her companions are gathering seeds for planting at home. The natural world and, in particular, plants and gardening are central to Kincaid's work. Among Flowers intertwines meditations on nature and stunning descriptions of the Himalayan landscape with observations on the ironies, difficulties and dangers of this magnificent journey.For Kincaid and three botanist friends, Nepal is a paradise, a place where a single day's hike can traverse climate zones, from subtropical to alpine, encompassing flora suitable for growing at their homes, from Wales to Vermont. Yet as she makes clear, there is far more to this foreign world than rhododendrons that grow thirty feet high. Danger, too, is a constant companion - and the leeches are the least of their worries. Unpredictable Maoist guerrillas live in these perilous mountains, and when they do appear - as they do more than once - their enigmatic presence lingers long after they have melted back into the landscape. And Kincaid, who writes of the looming, lasting effects of colonialism in her works, necessarily explores the irony of her status as memsahib with Sherpas and bearers.A wonderful blend of introspective insight and beautifully rendered description, Among Flowers is a vivid, engrossing, and characteristically frank memoir from one of the most striking voices in contemporary literature.Part of the Picador Collection, a new series showcasing the best in modern literature.

Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to North America to work as an au pair for Lewis and Mariah and their four children. At first glance Lewis and Mariah are a blessed couple - handsome, rich, and seemingly happy. Almost at once, however, Lucy begins to notice cracks in their beautiful facade.With a mixture of anger and compassion, Lucy scrutinizes the privileged, facile world of her employers while comparing it to the vivid realities of her home in the Caribbean. Lucy has no illusions about her own past, but neither is she prepared to be deceived about where she presently is.In this environment a new person unfolds: passionate, sexually forthright, and disarmingly honest. In Lucy, Jamaica Kincaid has created a startling new character: a captivating heroine possessed with clear-sightedness and ferocious integrity.Part of the Picador Collection, a new series showcasing the best of modern literature.

A startlingly beautiful novel about marriage by "one of our most scouringly vivid writers" (The New York Times Book Review).In See Now Then, Jamaica Kincaid's brilliant and evocative novel, a marriage is revealed in all its joys and agonies. This piercing examination of the manifold ways in which the passing of time operates on the human consciousness unfolds gracefully, and Kincaid inhabits each of her characters-a mother, a father, and their two children, living in a small village in New England-as they move, in their own minds, between the present, the past, and the future: for, as she writes, "the present will be now then and the past is now then and the future will be a now then." Her characters, constrained by the world, despair in their domestic situations. But their minds wander, trying to make linear sense of what is, in fact, nonlinear.See Now Then is Kincaid's attempt to make clear what is unclear, and to make unclear what we assumed was clear: that is, the beginning, the middle, and the end.Over the past forty years of her career, Kincaid has demonstrated a unique talent for seeing beyond and through the surface of things. In See Now Then, she envelops the reader in a world that is both familiar and startling-creating her most emotionally and thematically daring work yet.

The "revelatory" (The New York Review of Books) story of an ordinary man, his century, and his home. Jamaica Kincaid's first obsession, the island of Antigua, comes vibrantly to life under the gaze of Mr. Potter, an illiterate chauffeur who makes his living along the wide, open roads that pass the only towns he has ever seen. The sun shines squarely overhead, the ocean lies on every side, and suppressed passion fills the air.As Mr. Potter's narrative unfolds in linked vignettes, his story becomes the story of a vital, damaged community. Amid his surroundings, he struggles to live at ease: to purchase a car, to have girlfriends, and to shake off the encumbrance of his daughters-one of whom will return to Antigua after he dies and tell his story with equal measures of distance and sympathy.In Mr. Potter, Kincaid breathes life into a figure unlike any other in contemporary fiction, an individual consciousness emerging gloriously out of an unexamined life.

Jamaica Kincaid's collected writings for The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" record her first impressions of snobbish, mobbish New York.Talk Stories is a collection of Jamaica Kincaid's original writing for The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town," composed during the time when she first arrived in the United States from Antigua, from 1978 to 1983. Kincaid developed a unique voice, both in sync with William Shawn's tone for the quintessential elite magazine and (though unsigned) all her own-wonderingly alive to the ironies and screwball details that characterized her adopted city. The book also reflects Kincaid's development as a young writer-the newcomer who sensitively records her impressions here takes root to become one of our most respected authors.

"In this modern-day abecedarium, Jamaica Kincaid shares her deep knowledge of plant history and nomenclature while writing about the intersections of the plant world with history, race, mythology, colonial appropriation, and independence. Accompanied by vivid, powerful illustrations by Kara Walker"--

Kincaid gathers a sparkling selection of new and beloved poetry and prose about each author's favorite flora. The passion for gardening and the passion for words come together in this inspired anthology, a collection of essays and poems on topics as diverse as beans and roses, by writers who garden and gardeners who write.Among the contributors are Daniel Hinkley on hellebores; Marina Warner, who remembers the Guinée rose; and Henri Cole, with the poems "Bearded Irises" and "Peonies." Ian Frazier pulls weeds in "Memories of a Press-Gang Gardener," and Michael Pollan defends a gothic cousin of the sunflower in "Consider the Castor Bean"; Ken Druse stalks the sexy jack-in-the-pulpit, and Elaine Scarry contemplates steep slopes of columbine. Most of the pieces are new, but Colette, Katharine S. White, William Carlos Williams, and several other old favorites also make appearances.Jamaica Kincaid, the much admired writer and a passionate gardener herself, has assembled this diverse crew and provides a spirited introduction. A wonderful gift for green thumbs, My Favorite Plant is a happy collection of fresh takes on old friends.

Mors egen historie en sterk roman om en kvinnes liv på Dominica i Karibia.Xuela er ingen opprører, men har en merkverdig evne til å bestemme over eget liv, på tvers av mørke livsvilkår. Faren er politimann og har makt. Han gir datteren en utdannelse, men ingen kjærlighet, og han setter henne bort til andre når ansvaret blir for mye for ham. Xuela er en kvinne med skarpe konturer, sterk, og avklaret i sin bitterhet. Hun forteller sin historie i en fascinerende, gåtefull form som sprenger sosiale og historiske rammer.«Mor døde i det øyeblikk jeg ble født, og i hele mitt liv har det derfor ikke vært noe som har stått mellom meg og evigheten. Alltid har jeg hatt en råkald, svart vind i ryggen.»«Mektig og forstyrrende»MICHIKO KAKUTANI, NEW YORK TIMES

Originally featured in the New Yorker's 'Talk of the Town' column, these are Jamaica Kincaid's first impressions of snobbish, mobbish New York.

A story of a marriage, Jamaica Kincaid's See Now Then is one of her most emotionally and thematically daring works.

Jamaica Kincaid's poetic and affecting story of an ordinary man attempting to make a home on the island of Antigua.

One of the most important literary voices of the twentieth century on one of her greatest loves - gardening.

Jamaica Kincaid's poweful and moving account of the life and death of her younger brother.

In this travel memoir, the acclaimed novelist Jamaica Kincaid chronicles a three-week trek through Nepal, the spectacular and exotic Himalayan land, where she and her companions are gathering seeds for planting at home. The natural world and, in particular, plants and gardening are central to Kincaid's work; in addition to such novels as Annie John and Lucy, Kincaid is the author of My Garden (Book): a collection of essays about her love of cultivating plants and gardens throughout her life. Among Flowers intertwines meditations on nature and stunning descriptions of the Himalayan landscape with observations on the ironies, difficulties, and dangers of this magnificent journey.For Kincaid and three botanist friends, Nepal is a paradise, a place where a single day's hike can traverse climate zones, from subtropical to alpine, encompassing flora suitable for growing at their homes, from Wales to Vermont. Yet as she makes clear, there is far more to this foreign world than rhododendrons that grow thirty feet high. Danger, too, is a constant companion-and the leeches are the least of the worries. Unpredictable Maoist guerillas live in these perilous mountains, and when they do appear-as they do more than once-their enigmatic presence lingers long after they have melted back into the landscape. And Kincaid, who writes of the looming, lasting effects of colonialism in her works, necessarily explores the irony of her status as memsahib with Sherpas and bearers.A wonderful blend of introspective insight and beautifully rendered description, Among Flowers is a vivid, engrossing, and characteristically frank memoir from one of our most striking voices.

Lucy er en fortelling om å flytte til et nytt land og bli kjent med seg selv i nye omgivelser.Lucy har reist fra Karibia og egen familie for å bli au pair. I New York finner Lucy først og fremst ut hva hun ikke vil bli, hvem hun ikke vil være. Året hos vertsfamilien får henne til å betrakte sin egen oppvekst og bakgrunn, så vel som livet til vertsfamilien med like kritiske blikk.

An adored only child, Annie has until recently lived a peaceful and content life. She is inseparable from her beautiful mother, a powerful and influential presence, who sits at the very centre of the little girl's existence. Loved and cherished, Annie grows and thrives within her mother's shadow.When she turns twelve, however, Annie's life changes, in ways that are often mysterious to her. She begins to question the cultural assumptions of her island world; at school she makes rebellious friends and frequently challenges authority; and most frighteningly, her mother, seeing Annie as a 'young lady', ceases to be the source of unconditional adoration and takes on the new and unfamiliar guise of adversary.A haunting and tragicomic tale of the end of childhood, Annie John is told with Jamaica Kincaid's trademark candour and complexity, and is a true coming-of-age classic.

At the Bottom of the River is Jamaica Kincaid's first published work, a selection of inter-connected prose poems told from the perspective of a young Afro-Caribbean girl.Collecting pieces written for the New Yorker and the Paris Review between 1978 and 1982, including the seminal 'Girl', these stunning works announced a fully-formed, generational talent and firmly established the themes that Kincaid would continue to return to in her later work: the loss of childhood, the fractious nature of mother-daughter relationships, the intangible beauty of the natural world, and the striving for independence in a colonial landscape.Powerful and lyrical, this is an unforgettable collection from a unique and necessary literary voice.Part of the Picador Collection, a new series showcasing the best of modern literature.

A beautifully illustrated story of three girls caught up in the most curious of mysteries.

The coming-of-age story of one of Jamaica Kincaid's most admired creations--newly available in paperbackLucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to North America to work as an au pair for Lewis and Mariah and their four children. Lewis and Mariah are a thrice-blessed couple--handsome, rich, and seemingly happy. Yet, alomst at once, Lucy begins to notice cracks in their beautiful facade. With mingled anger and compassion, Lucy scrutinizes the assumptions and verities of her employers' world and compares them with the vivid realities of her native place. Lucy has no illusions about her own past, but neither is she prepared to be deceived about where she presently is. At the same time that Lucy is coming to terms with Lewis's and Mariah's lives, she is also unravelling the mysteries of her own sexuality. Gradually a new person unfolds: passionate, forthright, and disarmingly honest. In Lucy, Jamaica Kincaid has created a startling new character possessed with adamantine clearsightedness and ferocious integrity--a captivating heroine for our time.

A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua--by the author of Annie John"If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after him--why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen . . ."So begins Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up.Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright by turns, in a Swiftian mode, A Small Place cannot help but amplify our vision of one small place and all that it signifies.