When the Leader of the 1951 revolt becomes corrupt and authoritarian, both Doodsie and Angel welcome his overthrow by the radical Horizon movement. But mother and daughter take different positions when the popular Chief and the ideological vanguardists of the movement start to fall out. Doodsie knows instinctively where she stands, but Angel is altogether more conflicted about the rights and wrongs of the situation.

Angel richly inhabits the language and life of Grenadian working people, and moves seamlessly between the warmth and tensions of family life and the conflicts that tear a movement apart, provoke fratricide and allow an outrageous breach of sovereignty. As Doodsie says to her fowls, ‘If youall would stay togedder, the chicken-hawk won come down an do nutting! Stupes!’

In this new edition of Angel, first published to great acclaim in 1987, Merle Collins seizes the opportunity to revise and expand the last part of the novel, not to arrive at different conclusions, but to look again at episodes that at the time of the novel’s first writing proved too raw to be handled to her satisfaction.

Merle Collins is Grenadian. She is the author of two novels, a collection of short stories and two previous collections of poetry. She teaches Caribbean literature at the University of Maryland.