I've posted about this book here at my reading journal, but I'll just say this: The first symptom they notice is eerie flute music that no one else can hear, but this is only a prelude to the horrors of what's coming next. Along with the chronicler of this story, Milton Woodsley, one by one the Nevinsons fall victim to an old curse that threatens to lead them to their doom. He died by his own hand in 1965, a suicide by fire predicted in several of his novels.įifty Caribbean Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook by Daryl Cumber Dance.Īnother one that hits the high notes of my own shrieks of delight, My Bones and My Flute follows the story of the Nevinson family in 1930s British Guyana. For all these reasons he deserves the title of "father" of the novel in the English-speaking Caribbean" - Encyclopedia of World Biography.Īmong Edgar Mittelholzer's many honours was to have been the first West Indian to be awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Writing (1952). In addition, eight of Mittelholzer's novels are non-Caribbean in subject and setting.
They range in time from the earliest period of European settlement to the present day and deal with a cross section of ethnic groups and social classes, not to mention subjects of historical, political, psychological, and moral interest. "Mittelholzer's novels include characters and situations from a variety of places within the Caribbean. Between 19, he published twenty-one novels, and two works of non-fiction, including his autobiographical, A Swarthy Boy.
Mittelholzer left Guyana for Trinidad in 1941, eventually migrating to England in 1948, living the rest of his life there except for three years in Barbados, and a shorter period in Canada. Born in Guyana (then British Guiana) of Afro-European heritage, he began writing in 1929 and self-published his first book, Creole Chips, in 1937. even though there were writers who wrote about Caribbean themes before him, he was the first to make a successful professional life out of it.
Edgar Mittelholzer is considered the first West Indian novelist, i.e.
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