Island People: The Caribbean and the World

“A travelogue of love and scholarship. . . . [It] does the region splendid justice.” —The New York Times “Many have tried this before—to get hold of, in its entirety, the volatile, beautiful, relentlessly shifting Caribbean. Nobody has succeeded as dazzlingly.” —Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings“This terrific travel narrative . . . is also a magnificent musical journey (reggae, salsa and ska), a literary odyssey . . . and a heartfelt historical voyage. Island People powerfully shows how places shape people, and how people shape places.” ­—The Observer “Joshua Jelly-Schapiro possesses both a humanist’s irrepressible empathy and a journalist’s necessary skepticism. He reports carefully, researches exhaustively, cares deeply, and writes beautifully.”—Dave Eggers, author of Heroes of the Frontier  “Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s grand book on the Caribbean is so striking in form and vision that it amounts to something new—a constant surprise.”—Hilton Als, author of White Girls  “Written with passion and joyful music in the prose, Island People will become an indispensable companion for anybody traveling to the Caribbean—or dreaming of doing so.”—Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found