Clarke, Austin C(hesterfield) 1934-

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CLARKE, Austin C(hesterfield) 1934-

PERSONAL: Born July 26, 1934, in St. James, Barbados; son of Kenneth Trothan (an artist) and Gladys (a hotel maid) Clarke; married Betty Joyce Reynolds, 1957 (divorced); children: Janice, Loretta, Jordan (also known as Mphahlele). Education: Attended secondary school at Harrison College in Barbados; studied economics and politics at Trinity College, University of Toronto, beginning in 1955.

ADDRESSES: Home—62 McGill St., Toronto, Ontario M5B 1H2, Canada. Agent—Phyllis Westberg, Harold Ober Associates, 425 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10017.

CAREER: Coleridge-Parry Primary School, St. Peter, Barbados, teacher, 1952-55; newspaper reporter in Timmins and Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Canada, 1959-60; Canadian Broadcasting Corp., Toronto, Ontario, Canada, producer and freelance broadcaster, beginning 1963; Barbados Embassy, Washington, DC, cultural and press attaché, 1974-76; Caribbean Broadcasting Corp., St. Michael, Barbados, general manager, 1975-76. Also has worked as a freelance journalist for Toronto Globe and Mail and Canadian Broadcasting Corp.Yale University, New Haven, CT, Hoyt fellow, 1968, visiting professor of Afro-American literature and creative writing, 1968-71; Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, Jacob Ziskind Professor of Literature, 1968-69; Williams College, Williamstown, MA, Margaret Bundy Scott Visiting Professor of Literature, 1971; Duke University, Durham, NC, lecturer, 1971-72; University of Texas, Austin, visiting professor, 1973-74; Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, writer in residence, 1977; University of Western Ontario, writer in residence, 1978. Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, member of board of trustees, 1970-75; Ontario Board of Censors, vice-chairperson, 1983-85; Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, member, 1988-93.

MEMBER: Writers Guild, Writers' Union of Canada (founding member), Yale Club (New Haven).

AWARDS, HONORS: President's Medal for best story, University of Western Ontario, 1966; Belmont Short Story Award, 1965, for "Four Stations in His Circle"; Canada Council, senior arts fellowships, 1968, 1970, 1974, grant, 1977; Indiana University School of Letters, Bloomington, fellow, 1969; Cuba's Casa de las Americas Literary Prize, 1980; Toronto Arts Award for lifetime achievement in literature, 1993; Toronto Pride Achievement Award, 1995; Rogers Writers Trust Prize, 1997, for The Origin of Waves; Lifetime Achievement Award, Frontier College, Toronto, 1997; Order of Canada, 1998; W. O. Mitchell Literary Prize, 1999; Writer's Trust of Canada, 1999; Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for excellence in writing, 1999; Giller Prize, 2002, Commonwealth Writers Prize for the best overall book, 2003, Trillium Prize, and Regional Commonwealth Writers Prize for the best book in Canada and the Caribbean, all for The Polished Hoe. Also received honorary doctorates from Brock University, 1998, and University of Toronto, 1999.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Survivors of the Crossing, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1964.

Amongst Thistles and Thorns, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1965.

The Prime Minister, General Publishing (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), 1977.

Proud Empires, Gollancz (London, England), 1986, Viking-Penguin (Markham, Ontario, Canada), 1988.

The Origin of Waves, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1997.

The Question, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

The Polished Hoe, Thomas Allen (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2002, Amistad (New York, NY), 2003.

NOVELS; "THE TORONTO TRILOGY"

The Meeting Point, Macmillan (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1967, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1972.

Storm of Fortune, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1973.

The Bigger Light, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1975.

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks, Anansi (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1971, revised edition, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1973.

When Women Rule, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1985.

Nine Men Who Laughed, Penguin (New York, NY), 1986.

In This City, Exile Editions (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1992.

There Are No Elders, Exile Editions (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1993.

Choosing His Coffin: The Best Stories of Austin Clarke, Thomas Allen (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2003.

Author of Short Stories of Austin Clarke, 1984.

OTHER

(Contributor) Lloyd W. Brown, editor, The Black Writer in Africa and the Americas, Hennessey & Ingalls (Los Angeles, CA), 1973.

The Confused Bewilderment of Martin Luther King & the Idea of Non-Violence As a Political Tactic, Watkins (Burlington, Ontario, Canada), 1986.

Growing up Stupid under the Union Jack: A Memoir, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1980.

Charlotte Stewart, compiler, The Austin Clarke Collection, Mills Memorial Library, McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada), 1982.

A Passage Back Home: A Personal Reminiscence of Samuel Selvon, Exile Editions (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

Barry Callaghan, editor, The Austin Clarke Reader, Exile Editions (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1996.

Pigtails 'n Breadfruit: The Rituals of Slave Food: A Barbadian Memoir, Random House Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999, published as Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit: A Culinary Memoir, New Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Also author of Myths and Memories, African Literature, and other film scripts for Educational Television (ETV), Toronto, beginning in 1968. Managing editor of Contrast, a newspaper devoted to Toronto's black community. Launched McGill Street, a literary journal. Contributor to periodicals, including Studies in Black Literature and Canadian Literature. Manuscript collection held at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.

SIDELIGHTS: Austin C. Clarke's childhood in colonial Barbados and his experiences as a black immigrant to Canada have provided him with the background for most of his fiction. His writing is almost exclusively concerned with the cultural contradictions that arise when blacks struggle for success in a predominantly white society. Clarke's "one very great gift," in the words of a New Yorker critic, is the ability to see "unerringly into his characters' hearts," and this ability is what makes his stories memorable. Martin Levin wrote in the New York Times Book Review, "Mr. Clarke is plugged into the fixations, hopes, loves and dreams of his characters. He converts them into stories that are charged with life." In the Reference Guide to Short Fiction, Allan Weiss labeled Clarke "unquestionably the most important black Canadian writer." Whether writing novels, short stories, or memoirs, Clarke has a knack for capturing the dialect, the troubles, the emotions, and the thoughts of his individual characters, and through them relays a larger picture to his readers.

Among Clarke's short-story collections are When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks, When Women Rule, Nine Men Who Laughed, and In This City. According to a Short Story Criticism contributor, "Clarke's short stories are fueled by his experience of cultural alienation as a West Indian and his analysis of how racism and colonialism impact the daily lives of Caribbean immigrants. Clarke's frequently anthologized short stories are populated by portraits of complex individuals navigating the difficult terrain of cultural adjustment and assimilation." The stories in the collection When Women Rule are about immigrants, both white and black, from a variety of cultural origins, who share similar anxieties and fears for the future. Lloyd Brown remarked in Contemporary Novelists, "It is the central irony of this collection that the very idea of a Canadian mosaic, with its implicit promise of social harmony and individual success, binds Clarke's diverse Canadians together by virtue of its failure, rather than its fulfillment." In his introduction to the collection Nine Men Who Laughed, according to Victor J. Ramraj in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, the author "rails against the Canadian system that perpetually perceives the West Indian immigrant as an outsider," and he also criticizes the immigrant who finally succeeds, then "becomes tolerant of abuses." These stories, Ramraj concluded, "show Clarke honing his skills as a short-story writer. Most of the stories achieve an ironic control, discipline, and aesthetic distance not evident in [his] earlier work." The Short Story Criticism contributor commented, "Clarke is often criticized for letting his political agenda interfere with the narrative of his later works, thereby alienating the reader. Many scholars, however, emphasize that while these stories present a world rife with despair, they are ultimately underpinned by an idealized vision of a more equitable society."

Clarke's memoir, Growing up Stupid under the Union Jack, is an example of the author's typical theme and style. The narrator, Tom, is a young man from a poor village in Barbados. Everyone in the village is proud that Tom is able to attend the Combermere School, for it is run by a "real, true-true Englishman"—an ex-British army officer who calls his students "boy" and "darky" and who flogs them publicly. The students eagerly imitate this headmaster's morals and manners, for to them he represents "Mother England"; they are unaware that in England he would be looked down upon as a mere working-class soldier. The book is "a personal, captivating, provoking, and often humorous record of ignorance, inhumanity and lowly existence under colonial imperialism in World War II Barbados. . . . With its major emphasis on education and childhood, Growing up Stupid under the Union Jack continues to draw attention to one of the chief preoccupations of the anticolonial Anglo-Caribbean novel," wrote Robert P. Smith in World Literature Today. "The colonial situation is the essence of the absurd because it both causes and symbolizes the condition of being isolated from one's self, one's cultural and personal roots," explained Brown, who maintained, "the most central, and universal, of all [Clarke's] themes [is] alienation." The theme is well rendered in what Darryl Pinckney called in the New York Review of Books Clarke's "tender, funny, unpolemical style." This style emphasizes what Ramraj described as "his immense talent for capturing the feel and flow of Barbadian speech and his adeptness at creating hilariously comic scenes."

Some of Clarke's novels are also "set in Barbados and they explore the twin evils of colonial self-hatred and Caribbean poverty," Brown commented. The Survivors of the Crossing describes the attempts of Rufus, a worker at a white-owned sugar plantation, to lead a labor strike. He fails because the powerful white owners and the middle-class black islanders ally themselves against him, and even the poor working-class laborers eventually thrust him from their midst. Rufus's inspiration to incite rebellion came from his perception of the American dream, in this case, the power of the working class in Canada. Amongst Thistles and Thorns is the story of a nine-year-old runaway who finds his birth father, spends a weekend with him, then returns home still alienated from his current lot in life, but filled with stories about the American land of opportunity, in particularly New York City's Harlem. As Ramraj summarized, "What North America, in particular Canada, actually holds for the black migrant is not so pleasant, however, which is the concern of Clarke's next three novels, the Toronto trilogy."

The trilogy, which is perhaps Clarke's best-known work, details the lives of the Barbadian blacks who immigrate to Toronto hoping to better their lot. In these novels, The Meeting Point, Storm of Fortune, and The Bigger Light, "it is as if the flat characters of a Dickensian world have come into their own at last, playing their tragicomic roles in a manner which owes much to Clarke's extraordinary facility with the Barbadian dialect," commented Diane Bessai in Canadian Literature. Bessai also expressed eagerness for Clarke to "continue to create his Brueghel-like canvasses with their rich and contrasting detail and mood." "The sense of defeat among the poor islanders is enlivened by the humour of the characters and their glowing fantasies about the presumed wealth of relatives and friends who make it big in the fatlands of the United States or Canada," remarked John Ayre in Saturday Night. The reality for such immigrants, according to Brown, is that "West Indians must choose between being integrated into a strange culture—at the cost of their cultural uniqueness and racial integrity—or being so dedicated to maintaining their black, West Indian identity that they risk being cultural and economic outsiders in their adopted homeland."

The first two novels dwell mostly on Bernice Leach, a live-in maid at a wealthy Toronto home, and her small circle of fellow immigrants. The New York Times Book Review's Martin Levin praised, "Mr. Clarke is masterful at delineating the oppressive insecurities of Bernice and her friends, and the claustrophobic atmosphere that envelops such a mini-minority" as the Caribbean blacks in Toronto. In The Meeting Point, Ramraj wrote, "these characters have to contend with inner as well as outer conflicts as they try to retain their black pride and identity and come to grips with self-hatred and beckoning materialism." In Storm of Fortune, he continued, some of the group have increased their "measure of economic success and feel they deserve acceptance into the system [but] now have to cope with more sharply felt social alienation."

The third novel, The Bigger Light, explores the life of Boysie, the most successful of this immigrant group, and his wife, Dots. Boysie has at last realized the dream that compelled him to leave Barbados; he owns a prosperous business and his own home. However, in the process of realizing his goals, he has become alienated from his wife and his community. "His economic successes have not protected him from emotional failure," explained Brown. Now he searches for a greater meaning to his life—a "bigger light." "The Bigger Light is a painful book to read," claimed David Rosenthal in the Nation. It is "a story of two people with many things to say and no one to say them to, who hate themselves and bitterly resent the society around them. . . . Certain African novelists have also dealt with the isolation of self-made blacks, but none with Clarke's bleak intensity." A New Yorker writer praised the book further, citing Clarke's strong writing skill as the element that lifts the book beyond social comment: "The universal longings of ordinary human beings are depicted with a simplicity and power that make us grateful for all three volumes of this long and honest record."

Clarke has also written works that attack political corruption in his native Barbados. These include the novel The Prime Minister which, according to some critics, bears striking comparisons to Clarke's own experiences and observations in Barbados in 1975, when he served briefly as the general manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation. The novel Proud Empire, set in the 1950s, examines political corruption and middle-class values from the perspective of a teenaged boy not yet tainted by the reality of island politics. It follows Boy through graduation, a period of study in Canada, and a return to Barbados, after which he enters politics himself, though now reluctant and with open eyes. "The novel confirms," Ramraj explained, "that Clarke's strength as a novelist lies not so much in his probing the psyche and inner development of his protagonists as in capturing the subtleties of the social and political behavior of his Barbadian characters, whether at home or abroad."

In 1997 Clarke published the novel The Origin of Waves which, according to John Bemrose in Maclean's, "contains some of Clarke's best writing ever." It follows a chance reunion of two old friends, of an age similar to that of the author, who have not seen each other since childhood. The two reminisce for hours in a local bar, enabling Clarke, through their stories, to express what Bemrose called "a gentle melancholy and, finally, a spark of hopefulness" about the lot of the immigrant in Canadian society.

Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit: Rituals of Slave Food: A Barbadian Memoir, also published as Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit: A Culinary Memoir, is Clarke's remembrance of the classic Barbadian cuisine of his youth, mixed with a dash of family tales, a hint of island culture, and a sprinkle of his own cooking stories. The book explains how to prepare traditional Barbadian dishes, such as Breadfruit Cou-Cou with Braising Beef, Pepperpot, Souse, Bakes, and other "slave food." In addition, the reader is offered a heaping spoonful of insights on the culture of Barbados. Library Journal's John Charles reported, "The colorful cuisine of Barbados is the star of this book, and readers will find themselves immersed in the food and culture of that vibrant country." Booklist's Mark Knoblauch noted, "Clarke's marvelous ability to set down the unique Barbadian dialect and make it accessible sparkles throughout these essays." Knoblauch continued, "Clarke's recipes for ham hocks and lima beans and split pea soup illustrate how slave cooks drew the most flavor out of the simplest staples." One complaint critics had about Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit is the lack of measurements in the recipes, but as Clarke points out in the book, "To be caught reading a cookbook would suggest that the wife, daughter, or maid does not know how to cook, does not know how to take care of her man." Charles explained, "Cooks there are expected to rely more on taste and touch." Kola's Anthony Joyette dubbed Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit "a masterpiece," and noted that Clarke is "humorous, witty, and direct."

Clarke's next novel, The Question, focuses on a West Indian judge in Toronto who attends a party and meets a young white woman with whom he eventually goes home, even though his girlfriend intends to pick him up at the end of the party. The judge, who was taught by his mother never to discuss his personal problems in public, is intensely private with his thoughts and feelings. The result, according to Neil Querengesser of the Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, is that "he has throughout his adult life construed as public . . . virtually everything and everyone outside himself. Consequently he carries on an intense and very revealing monologue only within his own mind, which Clarke adroitly relays to the reader." The judge's relationship with the new woman, explained Querengesser, provides "deeper and deeper insight into his psychosexual makeup." Readers soon realize that, though the judge has attained a prestigious place in society, his insecurities with women and inability to communicate effectively with them have robbed him of any form of prestige or power.

"Clarke develops his central character masterfully. . . . The judge draws us into his thoughts, almost effortlessly it seems, so interesting are his insights and so effective his means of expression," wrote Querengesser. The critic praised Clarke for his "vivid and insightful portrayals" of the characters in the novel, writing, "His fictional characters inhabit a compellingly realistic world, their lives shaped by a complex mixture of racial, cultural, sexual, political, geographic, linguistic, and economic influences." Querengesser remarked, "Clarke skillfully weaves an absorbing tale of a man impelled by these influences of his past into a strange and uncertain future."

Clarke's The Polished Hoe, published first in Canada and then in the United States, has received much praise from critics and has won several awards. The novel is set in the 1940s on the island of Bimshire (a nickname for Barbados). "In a twenty-four-hour time span," noted Denolyn Carroll of the Black Issues Book Review, "the novel's main character, Mary Mathilda, giving a statement to authorities about a crime she has committed, unwittingly dissects the evils of slavery and its legacy of colonialism." Mary Mathilda, former field worker and mistress of Mr. Bellfeels, a plantation owner, and the mother of Bellfeels's only son, exacted revenge on the man that dominated her life for so many years, killing him with a hoe she spent years obsessively polishing. Library Journal's Faye A. Chadwell explained, "The twenty-four-hour saga begins after Mary has murdered Mr. Bellfeels and [police sergeant Percy Stuart] must record her all-night confession, an obligation complicated by his lifelong love for Mary."

A Publishers Weekly critic praised the work, saying "Most of the story . . . unfolds through brilliantly written dialogue, a rich, dancing patois that fills out the dimensions of the island's painful history and its complex caste system." Kola's H. Nigel Thomas commented, "[The Polished Hoe] focuses our gaze on an ugly aspect of Caribbean reality which many of us have been unwilling to examine." Donna Bailey Nurse of Publishers Weekly reflected, "Through horror and humor, and this dazzling vernacular, Clarke conjures an idiosyncratic people clinging doggedly to their humanity." Booklist's Brad Hooper felt the novel was "creatively executed" and Chadwell called it "a tragic, complex story" that "deftly reveals an abominable state of sexual oppression and racist tyranny and the revenge both can invoke." A Kirkus Reviews contributor dubbed the novel "a scorching indictment of the island's power elite" that is "warmed and softened by Clarke's celebration of Bimshire life: its foods, plants, rum shops, and the fortitude of its regular folks as they laugh and curse in cadences that Clarke catches so expertly."

Clarke has been writing in one form or another for several decades, but when asked by Linda Richards of January Magazine Online why he chose to write The Polished Hoe, he responded, "I felt the freedom for the first time that I needed as an author to deal with this subject. I did not know the subject was going to be this. But I felt the freedom and the liberation from all of the things that could influence the writing of a book negatively. I was not anxious for anything. I was in a very good mood. I was healthy. I was cheerful. And I had retained my sense of humor. And I thought, if not at the time, certainly now reflecting on it because of your question, that they are the ingredients that an author must experience and realize if he or she is going to write something that is great and good."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Algoo-Baksh, Stella, Austin C. Clarke: A Biography, Press of the University of West Indies [Barbados], 1994.

Brown, Lloyd, El Dorado and Paradise: A Critical Study of the Works of Austin Clarke, Center for Social and Humanistic Studies, University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario, Canada), 1989.

Clarke, Austin C., Pig Tails 'n Bread Fruit: A Barbadian Memoir, Random House Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999, published as Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit: A Culinary Memoir, New Press (New York, NY), 1999.

Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Volume 16, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1992.

Contemporary Black Biography, Volume 32, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 2002.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 8, 1978, Volume 53, 1989.

Contemporary Novelists, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 53: Canadian Writers since 1960, First Series, 1986, Volume 125: Twentieth-Century Caribbean and Black African Writers, Second Series, 1993.

Gibson, Graeme, Eleven Canadian Novelists, Anansi (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1973, pp. 33-54.

Modern Black Writers, 2nd edition, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 2000.

Reference Guide to Short Fiction, 2nd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Short Story Criticism, Volume 45, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

PERIODICALS

Black Issues Book Review, November-December, 2003, Denolyn Carroll, "Austin Clarke on Honing His Craft: An Island Epic Is a Capstone on a Distinguished Literary Career," review of The Polished Hoe, p. 64.

Booklist, February 15, 2000, Mark Knoblauch, review of Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit: A Culinary Memoir, p. 1067; May 15, 2003, Brad Hooper, review of The Polished Hoe, p. 1637.

Bookseller, February 20, 2004, "Austin Clarke," p. 27.

Books in Canada, October, 1986, pp. 20-21.

Canadian Book Review Annual, 1999, review of Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit, p. 140; 2000, review of The Question, p. 141.

Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, summer, 2000, Neil Querengesser, review of The Question, p. 164.

Canadian Forum, August, 1999, Judy Schultz, "A Barbadian Memoir Centered in the Kitchen," review of Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit, p. 39.

Canadian Literature, summer, 1974; autumn, 1981, pp. 136-38; winter, 1982, pp. 181-85; spring, 2000, Dorothy Lane, review of The Origin of Waves, p. 150; autumn-winter, 2001, Maureen Moynagh, review of Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit, p. 193.

College Language Association Journal, September, 1985, pp. 9-32; December, 1992, pp. 123-33.

Essence, July, 2003, Diane Patrick, "Take Note," review of The Polished Hoe, p. 106.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), April 24, 1999, review of Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit, p. E10; October 30, 1999, review of The Question, p. D22; November 27, 1999, review of The Question, p. D49.

Journal of Caribbean Studies, fall, 1985-spring, 1986, pp. 71-78.

Journal of Commonwealth Literature (Leeds, England), July, 1970.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2003, review of The Polished Hoe, p. 624.

Kola, fall, 1999, Anthony Joyette, review of Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit, p. 73; winter, 2003, H. Nigel Thomas, review of The Polished Hoe, p. 47, and "The Montreal Black Community Congratulates," p. 53.

Library Journal, February 1, 2000, John Charles, review of Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit, p. 96; May 15, 2003, Faye A. Chadwell, review of The Polished Hoe, p. 122.

Listener, June 15, 1978.

M2 Best Books, November 8, 2002, "Austin Clarke Awarded Canada's Giller Book Prize"; May 12, 2003, "Commonwealth Writers Prizes Awarded."

Maclean's, April 21, 1997, p. 62; November 18, 2002, "Passages," p. 17, "ScoreCard," p. 13; July 1, 2003, Brian Bethune, "Austin Clarke: 'I Feel That My Feet Are Planted Here in This Landscape,'" brief biography of Austin Clarke.

Nation, November 1, 1975.

New Yorker, February 24, 1975.

New York Review of Books, May 27, 1982.

New York Times Book Review, April 9, 1972; December 9, 1973; February 16, 1975; August 23, 1987; April 9, 2000, Laura Shapiro and Michael Sragow, "Cover-She-Down," review of Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit, p. 38.

Publishers Weekly, March 6, 2000, review of Pig Tails 'n Breadfruit, p. 92; April 21, 2003, review of The Polished Hoe, p. 36; August 11, 2003, Donna Bailey Nurse, "Austin Clarke: A Barbadian Abroad," interview with Austin Clarke, p. 250.

Quill & Quire, December, 1999, review of The Question, p. 32.

Saturday Night, October, 1971; June, 1975.

Times Literary Supplement, May 11, 1967, p. 404.

World Literature Today, winter, 1982.

World Literature Written in English, spring, 1986, pp. 115-127.