I always wondered why there was this difference between Latin people and the English when it came to books and literary publications.

Quite early on, in the Spanish and Portuguese-dominated colonies in the "New World", publishing houses developed into substantial institutions with continuously expanding lists.

With us, it is only in recent times that a handful of daring business people have turned their energies to book production and marketing in fields other than straightforward textbooks. (God bless the Gleaner Jamaica Geography which seems still to be going strong!)

It may be another indication of social taste and national characteristic, the Latin interest in ideas and philosophies, the innate assumption that writing--and reading---is of utmost importance, that literary matters are worthy of as heated discussion as the often ex tempore analyses and pronouncements of a politician in spate which is what we adore, particularly when washed down with gallons of beer and stout. The noisier and shoutier the better.

If you look at the bookshops in the different countries, you will see that the Anglo-Saxon, and hence our heritage has been to emphasise the physical aspects of the book, the weight, the texture, the cover design, the elegance of the paper. Perhaps it signifies the eventual fate which is to be wrapped in additional covering to preserve the work unsoiled and fingerprint-free, to present it well-dusted on a shelf. Let's not worry about whether anyone opens the volume or not.

In Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Havana, Rio, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Santiago, Mexico City, San Juan, so forth and so on; take a look at the bouquinistes or even the up-market booksellers. The shelves are packed with relatively low-cost productions printed and assembled in such a way that they seem destined soon to fall apart or to be bound by anyone who wants to keep them permanently.

These are books intended to be read and passed from hand to hand, to communicate what the authors are thinking about, what they see happening in the society around them and what they feel that society should take note of. These are not coffee-table items with lavish illustrations to help alleviate weariness with the words; nor placebo burblings with decorative typeface designed to replace the reality of the world with 'inspirational' sentimentality.

We're talking about a situation where writers and artists help create the nation and its thinking and where their contribution is as vital as bread and wine. In Kingston, the metropolis of the English-speaking Caribbean, you can count on less than one hand the bookshops that offer the equivalent or even attendants who know anything about the books(unless they're schoolbooks).

The University Press, for example, tries hard to produce elegant, well-designed books but who reads them? Furthermore, who can afford them when you can hardly repay your student loan and buy lunch?

Even 'paperbacks', once proposed as a cheap method of makng titles available, indicate the difference in thinking. The original paperbacks were the ones we were describing, printed simply on low-grade paper sometimes the pages left uncut.

"Anglo-Saxon paperbacks" are now almost as expensive as the prestige hard-cover edition with its glamorous laminated (and sometimes quite misleading) cover designs. They look good and feel good. Do they get read? Can they be afforded? Some of the locally published paperback fiction and poetry will carry a price tag of anything between $500 and $1200.Other "prestige" publications can run to $4000 or whatever.

Despite all this, the volume of published fiction coming out of the English-speaking Caribbean has increased phenomenally ---admittedly some of it self-published and admittedly much of it of debatable quality.

I don't know whether these writers have been able to earn a complete living from their publications or just how well the publishing houses in the region are doing. Certainly, some publishers located outside the region have been able to keep heads above water at any rate and one thinks of MacMillans as an example, but there's also something like the much smaller Peepal Tree Press located in Leeds in the UK.

I knew Peepal mainly because it had been daring enough to publish volumes of poetry by Jamaican authors like Gloria Escoffery, Ralph Thompson ---daring not in content but because it was poetry (and who buys poetry nowadays?

Borrow maybe, but buy!) and recently a fair amount of publicity was generated at Calabash literary festival in St Elizabeth by Peepal's re-issue of John Hearne's Voices Under The Window which had been originally published by Faber.

Peepal, however, has been putting out a lot of work not only by Caribbean but Black British and by South Asian writers. Among the Caribbeans, Guyanese writers seem prolific and also to have carved out a territory somewhere between reality and myth into which they slip as easily as a glove.

One of the most recent titles issued is A Silent Life by newcomer Ryhaan Shah, now back living in Guyana after a period away including work in the media in the Cayman Islands.

In Jamaica, we are preoccupied persuading ourselves publicly that Out Of Many One People, whatever we may think and however we may behave privately.

We have had spurts of anti-some one of the races that live here but I don't think we have really experienced the kind of divisions that exist between people of African and Asian descent as in Guyana. It is useful to learn something about this fact of life and its influence in that country.

Let me say at once that A Silent Life is not primarily about racial conflict but that background is powerful in the lives of the central characters. We focus on an Asian-Indian family which a dark and mysterious shadow has clouded for many years.

After the tragic death of Papa Nazeer whose profession if anything was dancing, his wife Nani retreats into a state of isolation hardly communicating with anyone, only occasionally displaying some sign of affection for her granddaughter Aleyah who becomes the central character in the narrative and whose imagination allows her to slip easily into a fantasy world of her own where she too feels the freedom of the dance.

The transitions are well handled by the writer who never abandons her smooth, cultivated and low-keyed style.
As Aleyah grows up, wins a scholarship to college in Britain, marries a Guyanese she meets there, has children and falls into estrangement, Grandmother's story unfolds bit by bit. It is that of a strong woman bent on changing the status quo of women and Asians generally.

An embryo politician. But that is considered man's work, not woman's. She tries to force her husband into becoming her public front and to undertake a role he is unable and unwilling to play.

When she pushes him too far, tragedy overtakes them. He dies and she enters her silent life. The question is whether history will repeat itself in the career of Aleyah who shows signs too of wishing to change her world by political means. As a promo on one of our local radio stations says: "History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes".

The book reads easily and feminists will like it well. It makes one want to know more about Aleyah and her marital relations, though this section has clearly been ruthlessly edited. It is a sign of a successful creation when you want to know more and more about a fictional person.

Ms Shah is at work on a second book but it's apparently not going to behave like a sequel to A Silent Life which reads in some ways like an autobiography. The next one is going to be about a mermaid! Guyana must really be a fascinating place.

The coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie I

Someone asked me to do a bit of research on the Internet and in the course of it I fell upon Time magazine's account of the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie I and the Empress Menen on November 2, 1930.

The journal's account while attempting to maintain an objective stance couldn't help frequent baring of the claws and an eventual ironic effect. It opened:

"With the cross of Jesus on his breast, Taffari Makonnen, already King of Kings, Conquering Lion of Judah and the Elect of God, proceeded last week to his Second Coronation, this time as Power of Trinity the First, Emperor of Ethiopia.

"The complexion and features of Haile Selassie, or Power of Trinity, resemble those of a Spanish Jew. But throughout the world last week Negro news organs hailed him as their own, recalled the honours conferred by His Majesty on "The Black Eagle of Harlem", Colonel Hubert Julian, "The Negro Lindbergh".

Matter of fact the people of Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, are of every colour from coal black through tawny brown to olive, include many non-Afric races. Centuries ago scornful Arabs nicknamed them Abyssinians ("mixed peoples").

Today members of the Royal House are strongly Semitized, claim descent from Hebrew King Solomon's Queen of Sheba, profess the religion of Coptic Christianity, acknowledge as their pope the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria..."

Ethiopia had no seaport of its own so the US Special Ambassador, German-born Herman Jacoby and his wife, attending as President Hoover's representative, disembarked at Jibuti on the Gulf of Aden and entered a private train for the 780 mile journey to New Flower (Addis Ababa), the tin-roofed capital of the King of Kings hidden among mighty mountains more than 6000 ft up.

They bore gifts which included a handsomely framed photo of President Hoover and privately paid for items like a red typewriter emblazoned with the Ethiopian Royal Coat of Arms; a radio set with phonograph attachment and a hundred records of 'distinctly American music'.

There were 500 rose bushs including several dozen "President Hoovers"; a new kind of amaryllis developed by the US Dept of Agriculture; a bound set of National Geographic Society publications; a bound report of the Chicago Field Museum's expedition to Abyssinia; three moving picture films: Ben Hur, The King of Kings and With Byrd At The South Pole.

Quite spectacular must have been the British gift brought by the Duke of Gloucester. It was a cake weighing one ton. President von Hindenburg's 500 bottles of fine Rhine wine would have helped to wash that down. France's gift was an airplane which flew from Paris to Addis Ababa in short hops.

The Ethiopian Royal House did some fairly spectacular spending buying from European jewellers US$1,000,000 worth of jewels and gold for a set of crowns over which the Coptic priests said 21 days of prayer.

Every lion killed in the country is the property of the Conquering Lion of Judah and some months before a bale of skins was delivered to a Bond Street tailor in London with instructions to "fashion them into suitable garments for a coronation".

And there arrived along with the lion clothes in Abyssinia in due course the Royal& Imperial coach of Kaiser Wilhelm II (bought cheap), a team of the celebrated Habsburg white horses and an Austrian coachman who used to drive the late Emperor Franz Josef.

For his coronation, the Emperor decreed a striking ceremony, the people to stand all night in a vast multitude around the Coptic Cathedral of St George, each standing person holding a lighted candle; the Emperor and Empress to pass an all-night vigil inside, then to be crowned amid solemn chanting by the Coptic Abuna (Our Father) Egyptian Archbishop of Abyssinia.

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World