Place of birth
Jamaica
Place of residence
Trinidad and Tobago
National identity
Jamaica
DOB
Gender
Male

Clyde Knight

Short biography
Jos Clyde Knight was born in a small village in the hills of rural Jamaica in 1951. His parents were impoverished hill farmers. He currently resides in Trinidad and Tobago.

At the age of thirteen he won a fee-paying scholarship to Clarendon College, a secondary school some sixty miles away, where he boarded. After secondary school he worked in the bauxite/alumina industry for four years, experiences which he drew on in his first novel, We Shall Not Die (1983). With the money he had saved from working he paid his way through a physics degree at the University of West Indies, Mona. In 1979 he was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to Cambridge UK where he took a Ph D in Materials Science. Back in Jamaica he has lectured in Physics at UWI, undertaken further full time research at Cambridge University and at Newcastle University. He has published numerous scientific papers in international journals.

We Shall Not Die was published by Longman in 1983, followed by Woman, Hold Your Head and Cry, (Peepal Tree, 1992). There is a strong political focus in his work on the class and race inequalities of Jamaica, a focus which draws on his background and experiences.