More Fire - Karolina Ramqvist 2002 and Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid
Ever since Margaret Atwood's Bodily Harm I've been longing to go back to the Caribbean islands then there was Jean Rhys with Wide Sargasso Sea , yet another fictive island like Atwood's and now via listening Malou interviewing Karolina Ramqvist on Swedish television I was sure, that I just had to read Ramqvists debut novel More Fire. Despite of the English title book is written in Swedish with a hint of Jamaican Patois here and there. The story is marketed as "a story of violence, sex and love on the verge of the first and third world." It is understood that it's Karolina herself who is the reporter that ventured out to the island of Jamaica, fell in love with a Jamaican man named Ganzie and ended up in an abusive relationship with him. Like in Bodily Harm the imminent threat of violence from any man close enough overshadows the life of the main character. I don't believe that Karolina herself is the protagonist even if the style of writing first leads y