Natives of My Person

De: George Lamming, Caryl Phillips - introduction

George Lamming—one of the Caribbean’s most powerful literary voices—reimagines the age of European exploration to expose the deep scars of conquest in this novel, which Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’'o, perennial contender for the Nobel Prize, calls “one of the great political novels in modern ‘colonial’ literature.”

A nameless Commandant sets sail under imperial orders—somewhere between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries—to locate the fabled island of San Cristobal, a place shrouded in myth and promise. But this is no ordinary voyage. As the expedition unfolds, it becomes a mirror of the imperial mind—ambitious, fractured, haunted by its own contradictions.

With poetic intensity and philosophical depth, Natives of My Person journeys far beyond the seas it charts. Through shifting perspectives and a richly layered narrative, Lamming unearths the personal and political dimensions of empire—its delusions, its violence, and the haunting legacy it leaves behind.

“George Lamming is not so much a novelist as a chronicler of secret journeys to the innermost regions of the West Indian psyche. . . an uninhibited journey to the heart of the colonizer.” —The New York Times