Is Just A Movie

Rich and original, inventive and funny, IS JUST A MOVIE is the first novel in over a decade from Earl Lovelace, one of the great Caribbean writers.

In Trinidad, the 1970 Black Power rebellion is over, its leaders rounded up. Sonnyboy, desperate to be recognised as one of them, forces the uninterested police to arrest him. KingKala, a singer, returns from detention and is sidelined in the calypso tent, his music dated and unfashionable. They now hope to make their name in the movie that is being shot on the island – but that too does not end as expected.

Still in search of recognition, Sonnyboy goes back to his hometown of Cascadu. And so we follow him and the townsfolk through their experiments in music, politics, religion and love; as, in their day-to-day adventures – be it a game of cricket, the short life of a corner shop or a miracle at a funeral – they begin to see more clearly what their community has to offer for its liberation.

Humorous and serious, sad and uplifting, IS JUST A MOVIE is a radiant novel about small moments of magic in ordinary lives.

Praise for Earl Lovelace:

‘SALT is a book of great beauty and force which is going to take its place as one of the classics of twentieth-century world literature.’
– Judges of the 1997 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize

‘Superb lyrical writing and a moving sense of history being enacted in the lives of individuals.’
– Mail on Sunday

‘Nowhere have I seen more of the realities of a whole country disciplined into one imaginative whole.’
– C. L. R. James

IS JUST A MOVIE was published by Faber & Faber on 20 January 2011.