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No Pain Like This Body

The forgotten classic masterpiece of Trinidadian literature

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No Pain Like This Body

By: Harold Sonny Ladoo, Monique Roffey - introduction
Narrated by: Damian Salandy
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Brought to you by Penguin.

With an introduction by Monique Roffey - this is her favourite book by a Trinidadian novelist.

Set in the Eastern Caribbean at the beginning of the twentieth century, No Pain Like this Body describes the perilous existence of a poor rice-growing family during the August rainy season. Their struggles to cope with illness, a drunken and unpredictable father, and the violence of the elements end in unbearable loss.

Through vivid, vertiginous prose, and with brilliant economy and originality, Ladoo creates a fearful world of violation and grief, in the face of which even the most despairing efforts to endure stand out as acts of courage.

'A masterpiece of hurt' The New York Times

© Harold Sonny Ladoo 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

 Classics Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature Caribbean
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Critic reviews

I have read the book several times and it is my favourite novel written by a Trinidadian novelist hands down. It deserves to be known (Monique Roffey)
It is a book whose enduring gift is that someone had the courage to write it, without illusions, beneath a black sky (David Chariandry)
Rereading this book has given me the gift of seeing it not only as an ode to violence, as it has come to be characterized, but also as a compassionate work by its end. I am indeed in love with this book. (Shani Mootoo)
Luminous and harrowing
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