Award winning author, Kaine Agary’s favourite books

MY FIVE FAVOURITE BOOKS: I don’t know about favourite books but here are five off the top of my head that have also possibly influenced me (in no particular order) a.  The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat – I like everything that Edwidge Danticat writes. I like the way she ‘teaches’ the history of […]

MY FIVE FAVOURITE BOOKS:

I don’t know about favourite books but here are five off the top of my head that have also possibly influenced me (in no particular order)

a.  The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat – I like everything that Edwidge Danticat writes. I like the way she ‘teaches’ the history of Haiti through her fiction and the Farming of Bones deals with a time in the history of the island of Hispaniola (1937) when thousands of Haitians working/farming in neighbouring Dominican Republic were massacred on the orders of President Trujillo

b. In the Castle of My Skin by George Lamming – A coming of age story… young boys growing up in the Caribbean.  Something about the story and the language is reminiscent of my childhood.

c. Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Very engaging novella.

d. The Autobiography of My Mother by Jamaica Kincaid – This must have been the first Jamaica Kincaid novel I read, and then I had to read everything else she had written.  I like the ease of her prose.

e. Buxton Spice by Oonya Kempadoo – This gave me licence to write Pidgin English without translations. She writes unapologetically in Patois.

WHAT MAKES YOU BUY A BOOK IN A BOOKSHOP?

The authors, reviews, the cover, the blurb at the back and possibly, press hype.

 

WHAT IS YOUR CHILDHOOD BOOK THAT YOU GO TO AGAIN AND                             AGAIN?

None, except you count the Bible and even then, I can’t claim that I have read it cover to cover.

WHAT WAS THAT BOOK YOU NEVER FINISHED?

I think, Petals of Blood by Ngugi wa Thiong’o.  This was nearly 20 years ago.  Maybe I was too young to appreciate it, I don’t remember.  It was one of two books I was struggling to read one long vacation and I never got back to it, although the second one, The Famished Road, by Ben Okri, I gave a second chance and ended up really liking it, so much that I tracked down Songs of Enchantment (bought it off a roadside seller in Brooklyn).

 

TAILPIECE- ADDITIONAL TO YOUR FIVE FAVOURITE BOOKS:

Famished Road & Songs of Enchantment by Ben Okri (Missed out on Infinite Riches though. I shall complete the trilogy one day). There are a number of other Nigerian writers I like, including Helen Oyeyemi.