Dominica / Special Interests / Recommended reading

The Roseau Public Library on Victoria Street south of the Fort Young Hotel has a good collection of local books. Dominica has an expansive literary heritage, some small publishing houses, an important modern day author in historian Lennox Honychurch and excellent nature guides produced by the Forestry, Wildlife & Parks Division and others.

Black and White Sands: A Bohemian Life in the Caribbean, Papillote Press 2009, is an autobiographical tale of colonial life at Pointe Baptiste, near Calibishie by Elma Napier, a lyrical evocation of 1930s Dominica.

It Falls into Place: the stories of Phyllis Shand Allfrey, Papillote Press 2004, author also of The Orchid House (Virago 1953), a sensuous portrayal of three white sisters returning to Dominica, land of their birth, and A Caribbean Life.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, celebrated novel partly set in her former homeland and Tales of the Wide Caribbean, a collection of her short stories, many framed in Dominica.

In Search of Eden, essays on Dominican history (Pont Cassee press 2002), A Passage to Anywhere and The Island Within (PC press 1999), all by Irving Andre.

The Dominica Story (Macmillan Press UK 1995) by Lennox Honychurch, the prolific observer of local life and tireless conservation campaigner; see also his Isle of Adventure (Macmillan 1998) and Our Island Culture on folk traditions and Historic Roseau (Paramount Printers 2001).

The Sugar Islands (Cassell 1958) and The Fatal Gift (WH Allen 1973) both by Alec Waugh, drawing on his long term admiration for Dominica.

Non-profit organisations and Government links:

Dominica Library Service, www.dlis.gov.dm