The publication of Talking Words has been designed to coincide with that of Pak’s Britannica: Articles by and Interviews with David Dabydeen, and provides the reader with a complementary set of essays that are focused exclusively on Dabydeen’s fictional output. Each of the ten essays was specially commissioned or extensively revised for this book, and collectively they provide new insights in his earlier poetry and the six novels published to date. Talking Words offers a fresh look by Caribbean scholars from across the world at all of Dabydeen’s major works, and clearly demonstrates the continuing interest in critical appraisal of his writing.

The book has been divided into two sections, each of which contains articles whose focus is predominantly on one aspect of Dabydeen’s writing - his poetry or his novels.