Anthony C. Winkler

"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.

"Set in the sixteenth century, Winkler's latest novel is something like "Heart of Darkness" meets "Animal Farm." But what happens when Jamaica's most flamboyantly irreverent and fiercely contemporary novelist tackles the past? Why, the past becomes flamboyantly irreverent and fiercely contemporary. Winkler's achievement here is not that he remakes himself as a historical writer, but that he remakes history."--Kei Miller, author of "The Last Warner Woman" "Winkler is renowned in the West Indies for his comic genius. In "God Carlos," he undertakes the formidable task of imagining the region's damaged history--unwritten and seemingly unreachable--with such ease and insight that we find ourselves transported to sixteenth-century Jamaica, as we watch the story unfold before our eyes."--Robert Antoni, author of "Carnival" "A vivid and powerful account of the tragedy unleashed upon the native peoples of the Caribbean in the years following the arrival of Christopher Columbus."--Jaime Manrique, author of "Cervantes Street" "Every country (if she's lucky) gets the Mark Twain she deserves, and Winkler is ours."--Marlon James, author of "The Book of Night Women" "God Carlos" transports us to a voyage aboard the "Santa Inez, " a Spanish sailing vessel bound for the newly discovered West Indies with a fortune-seeking band of ragtag sailors. She is an unusual explorer for her day, carrying no provisions for the settlers, no seed for planting crops, manned by vain, arrogant men looking for gold in Jamaica. Expecting to make landfall in paradise after over a month at sea, the crew of the "Santa Inez" instead find themselves in the middle of a timid, innocent people--the Arawaks--who walk around stark naked without embarrassment and who venerate their own customs and worship their own Gods and creeds. The European newcomers do not find gold, only the merciless climate that nourishes diseases that slaughter them. That the Arawaks believed that the arrivals were from heaven makes even more complicated this impossible entanglement of culture, custom, and beliefs, ultimately leading to mutual doom.

"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.