Water with Berries

Teeton lives multiple lives in England. One is with a bohemian group of artist exiles, like his friend Derek the actor who has sunk to playing a corpse on state, and his rival Roger Capildeo, a Naipaulian figure who denies the point of any kind of political involvement. There is also Teeton’s curiously intimate relationship with his English landlady, who he calls the Dowager. Finally, as a secret revolutionary from the Caribbean island of San Cristobal, Teeton is enmeshed in conspiracy. Thus far, Teeton has kept each aspect of his life separate from one another, but when he actively plans to return home and joins an incipient revolt, his once separate worlds begin to fuse together with disastrous results. This novel is a powerful study of the impossibility of disentangling British and Caribbean lives, the unacknowledged power of history, the nature of misogyny, and the conflict between the calls of art and revolution. In a narrative that is both deeply political and poetic, Water with Berries shows why George Lamming has been recognised as one of Caribbean writing’s most original figures.