More

At the news of her son BJ’s involvement in gang crime, IdoraMorrison, a maid at the local university, collapses in her basementapartment. For four days and nights she retreats into a vortex ofmemory, pain, and disappointment that becomes a riveting exposé of her life as a Caribbean immigrant living abroad. Abandoned by her deadbeat husband, Bertram, and left alone to raise her son, Idora has done her best to survive against immense odds. But now that BJ has disappeared into a life of crime, she recoils from his loss and is unable to get out of bed, burdened by feelings of invisibility. Slowly, however, Idora summons the strength to investigate her son’s troubles—and her own weaknesses—as she finds her way back into the light with a couragethat is both remarkable and unforgettable.

Austin Clarke is a professor of literature and has taught at Yale, Brandeis, Williams, Duke, and the Universities of Texas and Indiana. He assisted in setting up a Black Studies program at Yale in 1968, after which he became the cultural attaché of the Embassy of Barbados in Washington, D.C. Culminating with the international success of The Polished Hoe, which won the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and the Trillium Prize, Austin Clarke's work since 1964 includes eleven novels, six short-story collections, and four memoirs. He lives in Toronto.