Kirjahaku

"The author never relaxes his hilarious examination of the island's taboos . . . By far the funniest book I've read in a decade, although its ribald atmosphere is sprayed with the pepper-gas of aggressive social satire." --Washington Post Book WorldAloysius is the village madman, tolerated by neighbors but forced to eke out a living doing odd jobs. His only company are the animals, trees, and bushes of the woodlands in which he resides, on the outskirts of a village in the hills of St. Ann, on the island of Jamaica. Aloysius is lonely. Admittedly, the animals, trees, and especially the bushes have a lot to say, and undeniably, the flame heart tree is a true friend, but Aloysius has no human friends.Then love, or a peculiar version of it, comes to Aloysius in the form of a solidly built German tourist, Inga Schmidt. Inga encounters a sleeping Aloysius when she is traversing the countryside photographing the island's flora and fauna. Thereafter, to the trees' horror and the bushes' and village's disapproval, Aloysius's world is turned upside down as he finds himself hurtling along in a series of crazy escapades with his newfound love. For Inga, this madman is a revelation. Lunatic or not, Aloysius is capable of satisfying Inga's libido as frequently as she desires. But the romantic idyll is bruised when Inga invites a local butcher to join a m nage trois, and shattered when the trio decides to burgle the house of Busha McIntosh . . .In this outrageously out-of-order, hilarious novel, the reader discovers that madness is by no means restricted to Aloysius, and that goodness and forgiveness may be rarer qualities found in unexpected places.

"This book is laugh-out-loud, hold-your-side funny. You don't even realize the message in this poignant and philosophical story until you stop laughing . . . Winkler is a wonderful writer with a sharp pen and amazing pedagogy." --Today (NBC), "Cover to Cover"Baps, a Jamaican shopkeeper, drops dead unexpectedly one Saturday morning and finds himself being transported to heaven via a crowded minibus. Everything about Paradise that he had been raised to expect and believe, he finds to be utterly and completely wrong. For one thing, Paradise suspiciously resembles Jamaica. Baps has much to learn: about the afterlife, about God, about the distortions of established religion, and ultimately about humanity . . . With his characteristic outrageousness, and with more than a hint of postmodern playfulness, Winkler defies taboos and subverts conventional thinking in this entertaining, thought-provoking, and ultimately uplifting novel.

"Every country (if she's lucky) gets the Mark Twain she deserves, and Winkler is ours, bristling with savage Jamaican wit, heart-stopping compassion, and jaw-dropping humor all at once. And Dog War is his Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, except Precious is no yankee. She's a willful, stubborn, unintentionally funny Jamaican everywoman suddenly thrust into an America that's the opposite, always bending, twisting, and changing into shapes as confounding as they are hilarious. You don't read Dog War, you wait for the sparks to fly and hope they don't commit you for laughing out so loud for so long." --Marlon James, author of John Crow's Devil In a new and highly original take on Jamaican life, Winkler, the Caribbean's unrivalled master of adult comedy, introduces the estimable Precious Higginson, a large-bottomed, meltingly juicy, middle-class Jamaican woman with unshakable ideas on the right and proper behavior for Christian Jamaican women, their husbands, and men and dogs in general. But, when her husband passes away suddenly, Precious finds herself isolated in a mountainous region of Jamaica where her husband had always dreamed of living. Even worse, she finds her conventional world and her place in it coming apart--her ideas on proper behavior assailed on every side. One insulting episode after another occurs until she ends up in Miami working for a rich widow who is a fanatic about animals in general and her pampered lapdog in particular. With the indignities of life piling up on her, Precious struggles to make sense of the world she had lived in before her husband's death and to defend herself against monstrous assaults on her conventional beliefs. The climax of the story leaves Precious reeling, and sends her scurrying back home to evaluate this topsy-turvy madhouse called life and her place in it.