Augustown

Description

Winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, Augustown is a vivid, lyrical novel set in a small community in Jamaica. The story is triggered by a seemingly small incident in 1982: a six-year-old boy named Kaia returns home from school with his dreadlocks cut off by his teacher. For his Rastafarian family, this is a profound violation.

His great-aunt, the blind and prophetic Ma Taffy, recognizes this as the start of an “autoclaps”—a calamity. To help him understand the weight of the moment, she tells him the story of Alexander Bedward, the real-life “Flying Preacherman” of 1920s Jamaica. The novel masterfully weaves together folklore, historical tragedy, and the modern-day struggle against class and religious prejudice, showing how one day can contain the entire history of a people.