In the Castle of My Skin

Lamming's semi-autobiographical novel follows the boy G. growing up in a Barbadian village on the edge of a plantation in the 1930s and 40s, as the old colonial order begins to crack under labour unrest and the first stirrings of independence. The island grounds it: the poor village of wooden houses, the landlord's Great House on the hill above it, the colonial village school, the town of Bridgetown where the riots come, and the sea that will finally carry the young away.

The village

Chapter 1

In the flood-prone village of little wooden houses, nine-year-old G. watches a whole community, its neighbours, its gossip, its floods and festivals, in the last days of an order that has held for generations. The village, tenant to the plantation, is the small world whose slow awakening the book records.

Chapters 1-3

inspired by The boy G. grows up in a poor Barbadian village of wooden houses drawn from Lamming's own Carrington Village near Bridgetown; the village is sited in that real parish edge of the town.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗