We follow Adamine as she grows up in Jamaica, discovering through her church that she has a gift of ‘warning’. This gift is respected in her homeland but when she moves to England she discovers her prophecies are seen more as a sign of madness and she is institutionalised. Now as an old woman she wants to tell her story. A moving and bittersweet tale.
Adamine Bustamante is born in Jamaica, inside one of the islands last leper colonies. When she goes to a Revivalist Church, she discovers her gift of warning. But no one has bothered to warn Adamine that when she migrates to England her prophecies of hurricanes and earthquakes will no longer be respected. People will think she is crazy and lock her away in a mental hospital. Now, an old woman, Adamine wants to tell her own story but she must compete with Mr Writer Man the novelist who is twisting her words for his own book, and Adamine doesnt know why. In a story about magic and migration, about stories and story-telling, we discover it is never one person who owns a story, or who has the right to tell it.
Kei Miller was born in Jamaica in 1978. He divides his time between Jamaica and the UK and is currently teaching Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. He has published several collections of poetry and a book of short stories published by Macmillan Caribbean, THE FEAR OF STONES, which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer's prize for Best First Book.
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