#LiteraryArts | No Critics Just Artists

“Originally published in 1954 and acclaimed around the world as one of the classics of Caribbean fiction, “Brother Man” is the tragic story of an honest Rastafarian healer caught up in a web of intrigue and betrayal in Jamaica’s tough West Kingston slums. The healer’s name is John Power, but everybody calls him Brother Man – a cobbler whose ability to cure the sick and injured through a mystic force uplifts him to the status of a prophet. Throngs begin to trail him when he passes in the street. With each miracle performed his reputation spreads. Looking on with envy is the evil Papacita, a violent enforcer whose authority is threatened by Brother Man’s message of peace and love. Papacita’s jealousy is stirred in more ways than one. The brutal schemer also covets the attention of Minette, a young attractive girl that Brother Man has rescued from the streets. Set in the same rambunctious lanes that reggae icons like Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff would later stroll and sing about, “Brother Man”, is the unforgettable portrait of a ghetto saint – an ordinary man selected by the universe to bring enlightenment to poor belittled people. It’s a story of compelling mythic power that has stood the test of time.”

The seven christians stood together in the bright sunlight, bound with ropes singing a hyme to their foreign saviour as the spearmen advanced. Around them a croud of jostling men, women and children, more than sixty thousand strong… cheered enthusiastically as the spears were driven home and, one by one, the men and women fell and writhed on the sandy ground, their hymn fading slowly into silence…above the still writhing bodies, on a ridge, a score of crosses stood in mute witness, carrying their ghastly burdens, some of whom still lived despite the day and a half they had hung upon the wood.
As European colonists scrambled for control of Africa, a leader arose in the red island of Madagascar who, through ruthless determination thwarted the combined ambitions of all the major world powers. That leader and the author of this holocaust was no warrior but a diminutive woman of middle years, Ranavalona-Manjaka Queen of Madagascar, know to her subjects more simply as Ma Dieu. Under Ranavalona’s despotic rule, hundreds of thousands of her people, possibly one-half of Madagascar’s entire population, were murdered, starved or simply worked to death by her express command, while she enjoyed an eccentric and debauched lifestyle. For these characteristics, European history has remembered her reign as that of the Female Caligula.