Buxton Spice

Told in the voice of a girl as she moves from childhood into adolescence, Buxton Spice is the story the town of Tamarind Grove: its eccentric families, its sweeping joys, and its sudden tragedies. The novel brings to life 1970s Guyana-a world at a cultural and political crossroads-and perfectly captures a child's keen observations, sense of wonder, and the growing complexity of consciousness that marks the passage from innocence to experience.

'A superb, and superbly written, novel of childhood and childhood's end . . . Kempadoo writes in a rich Creole, filling her story with kaleidoscopic images of Guyana's coastal plains . . . Her story is also one of sexual awakening, and she explores these new feelings with a curiosity and freedom that are refreshing . . . Kempadoo's novel, like the Buxton Spice mango tree, reveals its secrets, private and political, only sparingly until the bitter end.'
-Patrick Markee, New York Times Book Review

'Oonya Kempadoo . . . has written a sexy, stirring, richly poetic semi-autobiographical first novel.'
-Gabriella Stern, Wall Street Journal

'As juicy and ripe as the fruits drooping from the Buxton Spice mango tree . . . Kempadoo's Caribbean argot is precise and fluid, enriching this debut with bawdiness, violence, and raucous humor.'
-Los Angeles Times

'There is a salt freshness to Kempadoo's writing, an immediacy which makes the reader catch breath for pleasure at the recognition of something exactly observed . . . She is a writer to watch and to enjoy, for her warmth, her fine intelligence and her striking use of language.'
-Paula Burnett, The Independent (London)*

Oonya Kempadoo, author of Tide Running, was born in Sussex, England of Guyanese parents and was raised in Guyana from the age of four. She studied art in Amsterdam and has lived in Trinidad, St. Lucia, Tobago, and now Grenada. She was named a Great Talent for the Twenty-First Century by the Orange Prize judges and is a winner of the Casa de las Americas Prize.