Olive Senior

Birthday Suit, This picture book lovingly follows the story of Johnny, who loves nothing better than splashing in the ocean waves – naked. His Mom says that now he’s four he’s too old to run around without clothes on. She even buys him a pair of overalls with child-proof snap fasteners! But they’re no match for Johnny. Johnny’s father explains that big boys wear clothes. Doesn’t he want to be like Dad? As Johnny gazes up, he decides that wearing clothes may be a small price to pay to reach such heights. Imbued with the lilt of the Caribbean and featuring illustrations by Eugenia Fernandez that capture the warmth and humour of the text, this charming picture book is sure to amuse young children – naked or not!

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Annick Press - World

When her house in the Jamaican countryside is damaged by a hurricane, Gertrude Samphire is sent by her estranged daughter Celia to Ellesmere Lodge, an assisted living centre. Gertrude is unimpressed with her new wealthy fellow residents, and spends most of her time alone. It is only through writing that she finds her voice, and begins to record her life in a notebook: memories of her gothic childhood, impetuous marriage, and struggles with raising a family. Gertrude slowly comes out of her shell, establishing and mending the relationships she has been missing for so long—and comes to realize she may not be as alone as she once felt.

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Canada - Cormorant Books

Olive Senior’s Jamaican birthplace provides the setting for these powerfully engaging stories that span a period of roughly 150 years, from the closing days of slavery in 1838 to the 1980s. The tensions wrought by rapid change and conflicting loyalties are at the heart of these stories, most beautifully evoked in the novella Arrival of the Snake-Woman. Here a young boy narrates the seminal event of his childhood in the late nineteenth century: the coming of a lonely Indian indentured woman into a mountain village. Senior’s stories are leavened with wit and humour and intricate play with language; her characters emerge as triumphant examples of the human spirit unravelling the complex weave of race, class, and cultural and ethnic identity.

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TSAR Publications

This exciting collection of short stories set in the Caribbean, places Olive Senior in the front rank of short-fiction writers. Senior’s achievement is to address ominous issues uniquely, by cataloguing, with wit and affection, the lilting speech and loping gait of the local population. Summer Lightning won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1987.

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Longman

This is a French language edition of Discerner of Hearts.

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Editions Zoe

The nine vividly rendered stories of place and character in Discerner of Hearts are set in Jamaica, both rural and urban, some present-day, others looking back several decades. Senior’s gift for fine characterization, for recreating the music of everyday speech, pervades these tales, which explore notions of home and exile as well as the intricate realm of the human spirit – its fallible nature, its indomitable strength against the sometimes downward pull of fate.

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McClelland & Stewart

This unique sourcebook runs the gamut from Abeng to Zombi with nearly 1000 entries and more than 700 illustrations which cover the various strands of Jamaican Heritage.

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Twin Guinep Publishers