Winner of the 1997 Commonwealth Writers' Prize!
Set in Trinidad, the story is launched by the mythical tale of Guinea John, an ancestor of Blackpeople, who put two corn cobs under his armpits and flew from a clifftop, away from the scene of his enslavement, back to Africa. His descendants have eaten salt, grown to heavy to fly, and cannot follow him. They are left to wrestle with their future on the island. Now, more than one hundred years after "Emancipation," like all the people who share the island--Asians, Africans, and Europeans--they need to be weaned from old captivities and welcomed into the New World.

Addressing the challenge of this liberating welcome are Alfred George, schoolteacher turned politician; Bango Durity, laborer and activist; and a swirl of unforgettable men and women--minor characters of major proportions--telling their stories in their own voices; all striving with passion and wit to make sense of their lives in the still-young country where the roles of enslaved and landowner still linger, but "the sky, the sea, every green leaf and tangle of vines sing freedom."

"I ain't come here to make the Whiteman the devil," says Bango, "I came to call him to account, as a brother, to ask him to take responsibility for his humanness....This business of being human is tougher than being the devil, or being God for that matter. And it doesn't matter whether in the role of the brutalized or brutalizer."

Stunningly written in a rich texture of voices, Salt aspires to the highest standard of literature--beauty, passion, thoughtfulness, and enlightenment--and succeeds.

From jacket copy of Salt published in the United States in 1997 by Persea Books, Inc., New York; originally published by Faber & Faber Ltd., London, in 1996. Copyright © 1996 by Earl Lovelace. Jacket illustration, "Flower and Fruit," by Che Lovelace. Jacket design by Carin Goldberg.

Kudos for Salt

"A novel confident in its rhythms, in the authority of its setting, driven by an exultant compassion for its characters." Derek Walcott

"Amazingly vivid and joyous....The novel teems with characters so improbable that they could only have come from real life....Lovelace has the ability to craft them all into a deeply satisfying whole....It is Lovelace's love for his characters which lights up the novel; the act of writing lovingly is the novelist's way of consoling his community. Salt achieves this movingly and brilliantly." The Times (London)

"Superb....[Lovelace's] flowing, melodious prose seduces with the unexpectedness of an utterly original voice....builds with tremendous energy into a panoramic vision of a people's aspirations and potential." Observer (London)

"A lively, sometimes lawless, tale of freedom and slavery....one of [its] key achievements is the balancing of stories from black slave history with current ideas about racial issues...a rich voyage of discovery." Times Literary Supplement (London)

"A book whose language tells an ancient tale in an wholly original voice." New Statesman (England)

"Lovelace's first novel for over a decade and it proves to have been well worth the wait....He is a wonderful storyteller, one of the Caribbean's best." Literary Review (England)

Click here to read the Trinidad Guardian's editorial on Earl Lovelace winning the 1997 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Salt. Click here to read An Intertextual Critical Approach to Salt by Earl Lovelace by Dr. Funso Aiyejina who presented this paper at the launching of the book in Trinidad on December 22, 1996.

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