Author | Olive Senior |
---|---|
Publisher | Longman |
Publication date | 1986 |
Awards | Commonwealth Writer's Prize (1987) Big Jubilee Read (2022) |
ISBN | 978-0582786271 |
Summer Lightning and other stories is a 1986 collection of short stories by Jamaican writer Olive Senior.[1][2] It won the 1987 Commonwealth Writers' Prize[3] and was selected for the 2022 Big Jubilee Read, a list of 70 titles by Commonwealth writers.[4]
In A History of Literature in the Caribbean: English- and Dutch-speaking countries the stories are described as "scintillating evocations of life in rural Jamaica".[5] Booker Prize winner Marlon James included it in his "My 10 Favorite Books" in a 2016 New York Times piece, saying "The entire future of Caribbean prose is mapped out in this collection of stories, and I don't know a single Caribbean writer who doesn't reread it often".[6]
Senior has said of this book: "I believe Summer Lightning to be a true expression of everyday life in that part of the world I describe, i.e., deep rural Jamaica, in terms of behaviours, beliefs, practices narrated and language used."[7]