On the basis of sensitive readings of Khan’s three novels and his collection of stories, Salick presents a persuasively high estimation of Khan’s particular literary qualities and his distinctive capacity – both comic and serious – for bringing Trinidad and its people to piquant life. Salick explores Khan’s skill in representing the diversity of Trinidad’s English and Creoles across generations, class and ethnicities. He celebrates Khan as the poet of urban experience and the passage from rural to urban lives, and is equally acute on Khan’s exploration of identity within an ethnically diverse society. Well documented and clearly written, Roydon Salick’s study reads across Khan’s work to argue that his fiction presents a philosophy of life that is more than ever pertinent to Caribbean societies.

Roydon Salick is senior lecturer in the department of liberal arts at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad. He is the author of The Novels of Samuel Selvon: A Critical Study.