Augustown

Name: Augustown
Brand: Recorded Books
Availability: InStock
Author: Kei Miller
ISBN: 9781501955228

Author: Kei Miller

Narrator: Dona Croll

Unabridged: 7 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 05/23/2017

Categories: Fiction

Synopsis

In the wake of Marlon James's Man Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, Augustown-set in the backlands of Jamaica-is a magical and haunting novel of one woman's struggle to rise above the brutal vicissitudes of history, race, class, collective memory, violence, and myth. Ma Taffy may be blind but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don't, and plenty of things that shouldn't happen do. For the story of Kaia leads back to another momentous day in Jamaican history, the birth of the Rastafari and the desire for a better life.

Reviews

Goodreads review by BookOfCinz

Updated May 23 Each day contains much more than its own hours, or minutes, or seconds. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that each day contains all of history. In re-reading this book I was reminded how much of a master author and poet Kei Miller is. I cannot get over how he is able to in......more

Goodreads review by Jill

What is Augustown about? Here’s the author, speaking through one of his characters: “Look, this isn’t magic realism. This is not another story about superstitious island people and their primitive beliefs. No. You don’t get off that easy. This is a story about people as real as you are, and as real......more

Goodreads review by Trish

An inverted gold crown on a jet background graces my cover of Kei Miller’s 2016 novel Augustown and the fiction points to the couple of days in the 20th C when the power structure inverted in a small town in Jamaica. A flying preacher, Alexander Bedward, is instrumental in inspiring the beginni......more