Illustrious Exile: Journal of my Sojourn in the West Indies by Robert Burns, Esq. Commenced on the first day of July 1786
In 1786, the Scottish poet Robert Burns, penniless and needing to escape the consequences of his complicated love life, accepted the position of book-keeper on an estate in Jamaica.
Price
£9.99
Author(s)
Andrew Lindsay
ISBN number
9781845230289
Pages
388
Price
£9.99
Classification
Historical fiction
Fiction, Novel
Country setting
Guyana
Publication date
08 Jan 2006

The success of his Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect made this escape unnecessary. Thus far is historical fact. In Andrew Lindsay’s novel, Burns indeed goes to Jamaica and then to the Dutch colony of Demerara where, into the world of sugar and slavery, he brought his propensity for falling in love, his humanity and his urge to write poetry. In 1997 a small mahogany chest is found in a Wai Wai Amerindian village in Guyana. It contains Burns’ journal from 1786 to 1796, when he died. 

Andrew Lindsay’s novel is a work of imaginative invention, poetic description and meticulous historical reconstruction. As a fellow Scot who has settled in Guyana, Lindsay brings an incomer’s fresh eye to the Caribbean landscape and imaginative insights into how Burns as a man of his times might have responded to slavery. Not least, Illustrious Exile contains some brilliant versions of Burns’ poems, as written in the Caribbean.

Andrew O. Lindsay was born in Scotland and now splits his time between Fife and Guyana. Illustrious Exile is his first novel.

Variations

Andrew Lindsay

Andrew O. Lindsay was born in Scotland in 1946. He studied English at the University of St Andrews where he gained the degrees of MA and B.Phil. He spent his professional career at Madras College, St Andrews, much of the time as Principal Teacher of English. He was able to take early retirement in 2003, a move that allowed him to devote himself to writing full-time.
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