Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Fiction Literary

Drums of My Flesh

A Novel

by (author) Cyril Dabydeen

Publisher
Mawenzi House Publishers Ltd.
Initial publish date
Jan 2005
Category
Literary
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781894770255
    Publish Date
    Jan 2005
    List Price
    $22.95

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

Winner of the Guyanna Prize, Fiction, 2006
Longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2007
Finalist for the Ottawa Book Awards, English Fiction, 2006

In a central park in Ottawa's Sandy Hill, Gabe, an immigrant from Guyana (South America), explores the past in the company of his young Canadian-born daughter. But this novel goes beyond the traditional innocence to reality plot, as it also embraces a quest for spiritual beingness in a compelling setting fraught with irony. Grounds shift as characters come fully to life; tropical and temperate zones merge; the past and present form intermittent shadows. Gabe's story of growing up in an Indian family struggling to live traditionally in faraway Guyana, and Christian, Hindu and Muslim worlds come together, as the plot unravels, and we continually move back and forth faced with new realities, new awakenings.

About the author

Cyril Dabydeen has published more than a dozen books of prose and poetry in the United Kingdom and Canada, including the novel Dark Swirl and the story collections My Brahmin Days, Black Jesus and Other Stories, and Jogging in Havana. The City of Ottawa appointed him Poet Laureate in the mid-1980s and granted him the first Award of Excellence for Writing and Publishing. He lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

Cyril Dabydeen's profile page

Editorial Reviews

". . . a beautifully rendered, intellectually challenging, and deeply satisfying addition to Dabydeen's oeuvre." --Dr Anne-Marie Lee-Loy, Ryerson University

Other titles by

My Undiscovered Country

Short Stories

by (author) Cyril Dabydeen

My Multi-Ethnic Friends & Other Stories

by (author) Cyril Dabydeen

Beyond Sangre Grande

Caribbean Writing Today

edited by Cyril Dabydeen

Writing the Terrain

Travelling Through Alberta with the Poets

contributions by Ian Adam, Robert Stamp, Tammy Armstrong, Margaret Avison, Douglas Barbour, John O. Barton, Doug Beardsley, Bonnie Bishop, E.D. Blodgett, Robert Boates, George Bowering, Tim Bowling, Jan Boydol, Gordon Burles, Murdoch Burnett, Anne Campbell, Weyman Chan, Leonard Cohen, Dennis Cooley, Joan Crate, Michael Cullen, Cyril Dabydeen, Lorne Daniel, Alexa DeWiel, Jason Dewinetz, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Cecelia Frey, Gary Geddes, Gail Ghai, Deborah Godin, Jim Green, Leslie Greentree, Vivian Hansen, Tom Henihan, Michael Henry, Walter Hildebrandt, Gerald Hill, Robert Hilles, Nancy Holmes, Richard Hornsey, Tom Howe, Aislinn Hunter, Bruce Hunter, Laurence Hutchman, Sally Ito, Pauline Johnson, Aleksei Kazuk, Robert Kroetsch, Fiona Lam, William Latta, Tim Lilburn, Alice Major, Kim Maltman, Miriam Mandel, Sid Marty, David McFadden, Barry McKinnon, Erin Michie, Deborah Miller, Anna Mioduchowska, James M. Moir, Colin Morton, Erin Moure, Charles Noble, P.K. Page, Rajinderpal Pal, Ruth Roach Pierson, Joseph Pivato, Roberta Rees, D.C. Reid, Monty Reid, R. rickey, Ken Rivard, Stephen Scobie, Allan Serafino, Joan Shillington, Greg Simison, Carol Ann Sokoloff, Karen Solie, Stephan Stephansson, Peter Stevens, Ivan Sundal, Anne Swannell, Vanna Tessier, Colleen Thibadeau, John O. Thompson, James M. Thurgood, Eva Tihanyi, Yvonne Trainer, Aritha Van Herk, Rosalee van Stelten, Miriam Waddington, James Wreford Watson, Wilfred Watson, Tom Wayman, Phyllis Webb, Jon Whyte, Christine Wiesenthal, Sheri-D Wilson, Christopher Wiseman, Stacie Wolfer, Rita Wong, Richard Woollatt & Jan Zwicky

Hemisphere of Love

poems

by (author) Cyril Dabydeen

North of the Equator

by (author) Cyril Dabydeen

My Brahmin Days

and other stories

by (author) Cyril Dabydeen

Another Way to Dance

Contemporary Asian Poetry from Canada and the United States

by (author) Cyril Dabydeen