- Paperback: 320 pages
- Published: 10/18/16
- IBSN: 9781617755323
- e-IBSN: 9781617755422
- Hardcover
- IBSN: 9781617755477
- Genre: Fiction
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Prospero’s Daughter
The reissue of Elizabeth Nunez’s captivating novel Prospero’s Daughter, a brilliantly conceived retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Available as an e-book for:
What people are saying…
“The very title of Elizabeth Nunez’s gripping and richly imagined sixth novel, Prospero’s Daughter, distances her work from both the original Tempest (in which the daughter, Miranda, is perhaps the least developed of all Shakespearean heroines) and from the many postcolonial reactions to the play . . . Nunez, who is a master at pacing and plotting, explores the motivations behind Caliban’s outburst, hatching an entirely new story that is inspired by Shakespeare, but not beholden to him.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Masterful . . . simply wonderful . . . [an] exquisite retelling of The Tempest.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Absorbing . . . [Nunez] writes novels that resound with thunder and fury.”
—Essence
“A story about the transformative power of love . . . Readers are sure to enjoy the journey.”
—Black Issues Book Review
Description
Prospero’s Daughter is a captivating recreation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest set on a verdant Caribbean island during the height of tensions between the native population and British colonists. Using Shakespeare’s play as a template to address questions of race, class, and power, Nunez turns an intimate eye to an unlikely bond formed between a boy and a girl of disparate backgrounds.
When Peter Gardner’s ruthless medical genius leads him to experiment on his unwitting patients—often at the expense of their lives—he flees England, seeking an environ where his experiments might continue without scrutiny. He arrives with his three-year-old-daughter, Virginia, in Chacachacare, an isolated island off the coast of Trinidad, in the early 1960s.
Gardner considers the locals to be nothing more than savages. He assumes ownership of the home of a servant boy named Carlos, seeing in him a suitable subject upon whom to continue his amoral medical work. Nonetheless, he educates the boy alongside Virginia. As Virginia and Carlos grow and come of age together, they form a covert relationship that violates the outdated mores of colonial rule.
When Gardner unveils the pair’s relationship and accuses Carlos of a monstrous act, the investigation into the truth is left up to a curt, stonehearted British inspector, whose inquiries bring to light a horrendous secret. At turns epic and intimate, Prospero’s Daughter is one of the finest novels of the past two decades.
Listen to Elizabeth Nunez discuss Prospero’s Daughter on CBC’s Ideas.
- Subjects: Black Interest, Caribbean Interest, Literary Fiction, Women’s Studies
- Tags: Caribbean, Elizabeth Nunez, Prospero's Daughter, Shakespeare, The Tempest
Book Details
Author
ELIZABETH NUNEZ immigrated to the US from Trinidad after high school. She is the author of ten novels and the coeditor of the anthology Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad. Nunez received her PhD in English from New York University and is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, where she teaches creative writing.
Nunez is cofounder of the National Black Writers Conference and was executive producer for the 2004 Emmy-nominated CUNY TV series, Black Writers in America. Her awards include the 2013 National Council for Research on Women Outstanding Trailblazer Award, the 2013 Caribbean American Distinguished Writer Award, the 2012 Trinidad and Tobago Lifetime Literary Award, and more.
Nunez’s works have been nominated for numerous awards, including the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award, the 2012 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Fiction, an International Dublin Literary Award, the Trinidad and Tobago One Book, One Community selection, New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, Novel of the Year for Black Issues Book Review, an American Book Award, the Independent Publishers Book Award, and several others. Her titles have also received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal. Her novels Anna In-Between, Even in Paradise, Boundaries, Prospero’s Daughter, Grace, Discretion, and her memoir Not for Everyday Use are published by Akashic Books. Now Lila Knows is her latest novel.