A Tale of Three Places

A Tale of Three Places
Mittelholzer, Edgar
London : Seckner and Warburg, 1957
347 p. ; 20 cm

A Tale of Three Places is something of a rake’s progress, moving from London to Trinidad to St. Lucia that ends sentimentally with the return of the rake to his original woman, despite the fact that she is pregnant with someone else’s child. Despite the lighthearted title and the comedic possibilities of the plot, Mittelholzer explores with often excellent effect the darker aspects of human emotions, sex and love as well as racism and post Holocaust anti-Semitism, and does so through some of his best dialogue. The novel also explores the racial and social genealogical interconnections in the Caribbean, picking up this theme that informs the Kaywana trilogy, his work on the founding of Guyana. This novel, like the earlier trilogy, provides a provocative if particular version of the defiant pride and deep anxiety of being Creole, especially white Creole. On one level, the plot of this novel asks the question of origin as well as parenthood, certainly one of the larger historical questions of the region.

H.D. Carberry Collection of Caribbean Studies
University of Illinois at Chicago Library
Daley Library - Special Collections/3rd floor (non-circ.)
PR9320.9.M5 T35 1957

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