The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Flickering Shadows by Kwadwo Agymah Kamau
Rick Henry

Kwadwo Agymah Kamau. Flickering Shadows. Coffee House Press, 1996. 300 pp. $21.95.

Barbados born Kwadwo Agymah Kamau’s first novel follows a small Caribbean island’s struggle through the latest round of colonialism’s three-pronged advance of Christianity, mineral development and political opportunism. The novel opens with the island’s recent political independence and the promise of an election, but the results have little impact on the people’s lives, which have been conditioned by three hundred years of abuses and dependencies. The arrival of a missionary, the discovery of bauxite, and the oppressions of the new political party fracture the community. A devastating hurricane worsens their plight, which is futher exacerbated by the Prime Minister who supports the building of a new church rather than the rebuilding of the homes ruined by the storm.

The novel is a testimonial, told from the point of view of a “duppy” (a shadow or spirit) as he witnesses the postcolonial nightmare. Kamau’s narrator drifts, his attention divided among a number of characters including two couples—Doreen and Cephus, and Inez and Boysie—who are singled out because the narrator is grandfather to Cephus and Inez. Kamau follows their interpersonal interactions (Boysie and Doreen’s affair, for example, or Cephus’s alleged betrayal of Boysie) as well as their varied relations to the colonial triumvirate (Boysie becomes an opposition leader urged by a student of Marxism and supported by the Obeah and Brethren; Doreen flirts with Christianity).

Intertwined in their drama is the delicate underpinning of the novel: the relationship between the world of the spirits and humans. The narrator and other shadows frequent the living to reveal themselves and intervene at appropriate moments. What is most instructive is how Kamau negotiates this perspective: he has the opportunity to cover three hundred years of colonialism, to mark numerous parallels through the years, and to personalize the abuses of power. Instead, he maintains the disinterested interest of the shadows who populate the novel—moved less by moral outrage at the atrocities than by a more abstract sense of imperfect and sporadic justice. It is a powerful and sometimes disconcerting perspective, and a welcome addition to the growing literature of the region. [Rick Henry]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Flickering Shadows by Kwadwo Agymah Kamau Rick Henry Kwadwo Agymah Kamau. Flickering Shadows. Coffee House Press, 1996. 300 pp. $21.95. Barbados born Kwadwo Agymah Kamau’s first novel follows a small Caribbean island’s struggle through the latest round of colonialism’s three-pronged advance of Christianity, mineral development and political opportunism. The novel opens with the island’s recent political independence and the promise of an election, but the results have little impact on the people’s lives, which have been conditioned by three hundred years of abuses and dependencies. The arrival of a missionary, the discovery of bauxite, and the oppressions of the new political party fracture the community. A devastating hurricane worsens their plight, which is futher exacerbated by the Prime Minister who supports the building of a new church rather than the rebuilding of the homes ruined by the storm. The novel is a testimonial, told from the point of view of a “duppy” (a shadow or spirit) as he witnesses the postcolonial nightmare. Kamau’s narrator drifts, his attention divided among a number of characters including two couples—Doreen and Cephus, and Inez and Boysie—who are singled out because the narrator is grandfather to Cephus and Inez. Kamau follows their interpersonal interactions (Boysie and Doreen’s affair, for example, or Cephus’s alleged betrayal of Boysie) as well as their varied relations to the colonial triumvirate (Boysie becomes an opposition leader urged by a student of Marxism and supported by the Obeah and Brethren; Doreen flirts with Christianity). Intertwined in their drama is the delicate underpinning of the novel: the relationship between the world of the spirits and humans. The narrator and other shadows frequent the living to reveal themselves and intervene at appropriate moments. What is most instructive is how Kamau negotiates this perspective: he has the opportunity to cover three hundred years of colonialism, to mark numerous parallels through the years, and to personalize the abuses of power. Instead, he maintains the disinterested interest of the shadows who populate the novel—moved less by moral outrage at the atrocities than by a more abstract sense of imperfect and sporadic justice. It is a powerful and sometimes disconcerting perspective, and a welcome addition to the growing literature of the region. [Rick Henry]

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