Kirjahaku

Cyril Dabydeen's new collection of stories, North of the Equator, looks at the polarities of tropical and temperate places. Acclaimed novelist Sam Selvon (The Lonely Londoners) says, "Dabydeen is in the vanguard of contemporary short-story writers, shuttling with equal and consummate skill from rural Guyana to metropolitan Canada." Dabydeen's characters occupy the spaces in between. They live in limbo, stretched between two worlds: one, an adopted home in Canada; the other, a birthplace in the islands scattered across the equator.

Cyril Dabydeen brings a poet's vision to these stories which span the crossing between the Caribbean and North America. They have a surface of gritty realism, but move inwards to explore the hidden dreams and latent capacities of his characters. Whether in the unsettling landscapes of rural Berbice in Guyana (with its ferocious crocodiles and even a spliff-toting Rasta), the wilderness of the Canadian North, or the urban melting pot of Toronto, Dabydeen's characters are memorably alert to what makes them feel either at home or alien in their various landscapes. Ranging from the extremely funny to the tragic, these stories are full of poetry, tension and sometimes terror. Cyril Dabydeen involves the reader creatively in a world of shifting grounds.Cyril Dabydeen was born in Guyana in 1945. He migrated to Canada in 1970. He is the author of almost a dozen collections of poetry, two novels and six collections of short stories.

A superb collection from one of Canada's acclaimed short story writers. Cyril Dabydeen's Forgotten Exiles presents vibrant, humorous, and emotionally charged stories that explore displacement, identity, and belonging. Drawing on his Guyanese and Caribbean roots, Dabydeen reflects on his life in the 1970s, from planting trees in the rugged landscapes around Lake Superior to navigating cultural divides between Canada and the Amazon. His rhythmic prose and vivid imagery tackle themes of race, class, and self-discovery, with love triangles and social concerns at the heart of these compelling narratives, reaffirming Dabydeen's mastery of contemporary fiction.