THE COUNTRY, of course, should feel a sense of pride as Trinidad and Tobago novelist-playwright Earl Lovelace is presented to Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace today. Lovelace's meeting with the British Monarch is a unique and traditional part of the Commonwealth Writers Prize which is given annually for the best book among writers in this English-speaking family of nations. The TT novelist has won this major recognition, which also carries an award of 10,000 pounds, for his fifth novel, Salt, which has won exceptionally high praise from the panel of international judges.

"This is a book of great beauty and force which is going to take its place as one of the classics of 20th century world literature."

Chair of the judges, Professor Hermione Lee, described Salt as a "Caribbean novel of huge vigour and vitality, written with dazzling energy. It is at once a human story, full of humour, pain, courage and sympathy, and a powerful, generous, masterful analysis of colonial history."

The pride we should take in Lovelace, then, derives not simply from the fact that the Toco boy has joined the pantheon of outstanding West Indian writers but because he has also produced a body and level of work that commands international admiration and, in fact, is now being rated as among the best of 20th century world literature.

Through Lovelace's descriptive art, readers beyond the Commonwealth have also come to a greater appreciation of West Indian writing as his novels and stories have been translated into several other languages including German, French, Dutch and Hungarian.

But among that distinguished pantheon of Caribbean authors, Lovelace may well be a rare and even more fascinating figure for having done most of his writing at home and for producing a number of notable novels and short stories all of which were inspired by the colourful indigenous life and history of Trinidad and Tobago. It takes considerable commitment to the craft of writing and a special kind of love for one's own country for a West Indian writer to remain at home, accepting the limited opportunities both literary and financial. But Lovelace has done this which, in our view, makes his work even more endearing and his fame even more satisfying.

In covering the launch of Salt in London late last year, Trinidad Guardian writer Simon Lee observed that in the novel, his first in ten years, Lovelace has tackled the whole immensely fertile period leading up to independence, through the days of Black Power in the seventies and right up to the present day.

"Those acquainted with recent Trinidad history," said Lee, "will immediately recognise scenes like Dr Eric Williams throwing his telephone into the sea, telling those who didn't agree with him to get the hell out, and laugh over Lovelace's suitably farcical treatment of the dragon on top of the Red House saga. "All ah we tief" and the Hallelujah controversy also make their way into this fiction.

"The major theme he explores is that of a nation of disparate peoples coming to terms with their history, struggling to understand their liberty and independence in the post (or neo) colonial context of modern Trinidad."

Lovelace's literary success is all the more remarkable for the fact that he is truly a self made writer, turning to his typewriter fulltime after a variety of occupations including agricultural worker, forest ranger and journalist with the Trinidad Guardian where, as so many of TT's leading authors did before him, he discovered and developed his love for writing.

As he meets the Queen at Buckingham Palace today and receives his Commonwealth Writers' Prize, we must feel a measure of pride that his Salt, an imaginative taste of the life and history of TT, will be adding so much savour to the literature of the world.