Tales of the Paria Main Road

For Paria Publishing’s 35th anniversary and in honour of Gerard A. Besson being awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of the West Indies, we are presenting a limited second edition of his first published work, Tales of the Paria Main Road. First published in 1973, this whimsical book began Gerard’s journey into publishing, which lead to the formation of Paria Publishing Company Limited. Tales of the Paria Main Road is comprised of three short stories loosely based on the mis-adventures of Jerry and his friends as a young men in Trinidad during the 1960/70’s. It touches on the folklore of Trinidad and Tobago’s Afro French culture and introduces the reader to some of the characters who still inhabit to this day the forest of the Paria Main Road. Not all is folklore and tall tales, however. At the time, Trinidad, like much of the world, was changing and this was ever present in the growing social awareness of the Black Power Movement which played a big part of our nation’s growth, as seen through Besson’s eyes.