NO PAIN LIKE THIS BODY

This classic of Canadian and Caribbean writing is set in an early 20th-century Hindu community in the Eastern Caribbean. The novel describes the perilous existence of a poor rice-growing family during the August rainy season. Their struggles to cope with illness, a drunken and unpredictable father, and the violence of the elements seem unending and relentless and culminate in what seems to be unbearable loss. Through vivid, vertiginous prose, and with brilliant economy and originality, Ladoo creates a fearful world of violation and grief in the face of which even the most despairing efforts to endure stand out as acts of raw courage. -

Harold Sonny Ladoo is the author of "Yesterdays". He was born in Trinidad before he went abroad, emigrating to Canada in 1968. He died an untimely and violent death on a visit home to Calcutta Settlement, Trinidad, at the age of 28.

First published in 1972, No Pain Like this Body is broadly considered a classic in Canada and in the Caribbean and was featured in Heinemann's Caribbean Writers Series in 1987.