Disaster catapults three children into the care of their Caribbean grandparents,
before another relative, elusive and perhaps unstable, makes a conflicting claim
to guardianship. Balancing domestic calamity against her own compulsive
writing, Aria faces physical and psychological threats as a pandemic creeps up
on the world and the country moves into lockdown. By Such a Parting Light
offers a humorous and poignant tale of aging and of coming of age, and it takes
a mischievous approach to the multiple meanings of retirement.

A must for all readers of Caribbean and island literature - for readers with a
taste for realism that blends seamlessly into strains of the marvelous and gothic
- the novel's themes of loss and separation, love and resilience, are universally
appealing. The book personalizes local and international violence and terror by
bringing it all home to a small country in an international context of uncontained
infection and catastrophic politics. Turning an astonished eye on developed
nations from the frail shelter of a tiny island, the tale unveils alternative notions
of civilization and enlightenment.

BARBARA LALLA is Professor Emerita, Language and Literature, the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Her many publications include the novels One Thousand Eyes, Grounds for Tenure, Uncle Brother, Cascade, and Arch of Fire, and the scholarly works Postcolonialisms: Caribbean Rereading of Medieval English Discourse, Defining Jamaican Fiction: Marronage and the Discourse of Survival, the companion volumes Language in Exile: Three Hundred Years of Jamaican Creole and Voices in Exile: Jamaican Texts of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (co-authored with Jean D'Costa), and Caribbean Literary Discourse (co-authored with Jean D'Costa and Velma Pollard).