A Million Aunties: A Novel

Description

American-born artist Chris is forced to reconsider his own concept of 'family' during a visit to his mother's Caribbean homeland. After a personal tragedy upends his world, American-born artist Chris travels to his mother's homeland in the Caribbean hoping to find some peace and tranquility. He plans to spend his time painting in solitude and coming to terms with his recent loss and his fractured relationship with his father. Instead, he discovers a new extended and complicated "family," with their own startling stories, including a love triangle. The people he meets help him to heal, even as he supports them in unexpected ways, through his art. Told from different points of view, this is a compelling novel about unlikely love, friendship, and community, with several surprises along the way. The story takes place against the backdrop of rural Jamaica, New York City, and Paris, France. 'A Million Aunties is an elegantly written and emotionally engrossing work of fiction.' - Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other 'A Million Aunties gives us the stories of an unlikely cross-world community brought together by anguish, loss, difference, the healing gifts of art, and above all, the loves of women. Under her deceptively revealing title, Alecia McKenzie recreates Jamaica's enduring traditions in fresh and illuminating ways that make this one of the most avant-garde fictions I have read in a long time.'- Curdella Forbes, author of A Tall History of Sugar

ALECIA McKENZIE is a Jamaican writer currently based in France. Her first collection of short stories, Satellite City, and her novel, Sweetheart, have both won Commonwealth Book Prizes. The French edition of Sweetheart was awarded the Prix Carbet des Lyceens. Her other books include Stories from Yard, Doctor's Orders, and When the Rain Stopped in Natland. Her writing has also appeared in a range of literary magazines and in anthologies such as Stories from Blue Latitudes, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, Bridges, Global Tales, Girls Night In, and To Exist Is to Resist. She has edited two collections of contemporary short stories, and her poetry has been published in various international journals including The Caribbean Writer and the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

A Million Aunties is an elegantly written and emotionally engrossing work of fiction. --Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other A Million Aunties gives us the stories of an unlikely cross-world community brought together by anguish, loss, difference, the healing gifts of art, and above all, the loves of women. Under her deceptively revealing title, Alecia McKenzie recreates Jamaica's enduring traditions in fresh and illuminating ways that make this one of the most avant-garde fictions I have read in a long time. --Curdella Forbes, author of A Tall History of Sugar "McKenzie has infused this lovely novel with such life and such passion . . . [Sweetheart is] a dazzling celebration of human connection." --Maple Tree Literary Supplement, on Sweetheart