There Are No Elders (Exile Classics Five)

No writer tells such authoritative and compelling stories of life as it is lived among black West Indians in our big cities as Austin Clarke. His language is rich, his rhythms true to the talk on the streets, his sympathetic ear to the plight of the urban displaced is moving. Austin Clarke is one of the singular and most significant writers of our time and place.

Austin Clarke was a professor of literature and taught at Yale, Brandeis, Williams, Duke, and the Universities of Texas and Indiana. He assisted in setting up a Black Studies program at Yale in 1968, after which he became the cultural attaché of the Embassy of Barbados in Washington, D.C. Culminating with the international success of The Polished Hoe, which won the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and the Trillium Prize. Austin Clarke’s work since 1964 includes eleven novels, six short-story collections, and four memoirs. He lived in Toronto until his death in June 2016.