' They won't know you the you that's hidden somewhere in the castle of your skin' Nine-year-old G leads a life of quiet mischief crab catching teasing preachers & playing among the pumpkin vines His sleepy fishing village in 1930s Barbados is overseen by the English landlord who lives on the hill just as their ' Little England' is watched over by the Mother Country Yet gradually G finds himself awakening to the violence & injustice that lurk beneath the apparent order of things As the world he knows begins to crumble revealing the bruising secret at its heart he is spurred ever closer to a life-changing decision Lyrical & unsettling George Lamming's autobiographical coming-of-age novel is a story of tragic innocence amid the collapse of colonial rule' Rich & riotous' The Times' Its poetic imaginative writing has never been surpassed' Tribune