About the Author

Austin Clarke's novel THE POLISHED HOE is the winner of the 2003 Commonwealth Prize; the 2002 Giller Prize - Canada's most prestigious literary award; and Ontario's 2002 Trillium Book Award. Austin Clarke is also the winner of the 1999 W.O. Mitchell Prize, awarded each year to a Canadian writer who has produced an outstanding body of work and served as a mentor to other writers. Born in Barbados, Austin Clarke now lives in Toronto, and is the author of six short-story collections and ten novels.

Reviews

Respect to Tindal Street Press for bringing to the UK this soaring and sorrowful novel of Caribbean life . . . The novel's language proves as lush, seductive - and dangerous - as its landscape
*Independent*

An extraordinary tale of lust and oppression . . . a beautiful light-skinned "black" woman [is] forced by the ambition of her mother and the sexual appetite of her colonial master to live a dangerous double life as beneficiary and plaything of a society steeped in racial cruelty
*The Times*

A richly crafted novel which eludes, defies categories; it is variously wistful and agonising, ironic and sensual; a tragic tale, relentlessly wrought
*2003 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Jury Citation*

Respect to Tindal Street Press for bringing to the UK this soaring and sorrowful novel of Caribbean life . . . The novel's language proves as lush, seductive - and dangerous - as its landscape * Independent *
An extraordinary tale of lust and oppression . . . a beautiful light-skinned "black" woman [is] forced by the ambition of her mother and the sexual appetite of her colonial master to live a dangerous double life as beneficiary and plaything of a society steeped in racial cruelty * The Times *
A richly crafted novel which eludes, defies categories; it is variously wistful and agonising, ironic and sensual; a tragic tale, relentlessly wrought * 2003 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Jury Citation *