Deb­bie Ja­cob

If you haven't yet dis­cov­ered Trinida­di­an writer Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj, then you've been miss­ing out on read­ing fic­tion by one of the best writ­ers to come out of the Caribbean. Cana­da-based Ma­haraj has been mak­ing waves with his own fic­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry–a murky pool that ex­ists be­tween bor­ders: a no-man's land where scared and lone­ly im­mi­grants pass­ing from one coun­try to the next re­side alone in their thoughts while they cut ties with their home­land and set­tle in a new land.

Un­like most Caribbean writ­ers whose work cap­tures ei­ther the Caribbean or the im­mi­grant ex­pe­ri­ence, Ma­haraj presents that un­known ter­ri­to­ry in be­tween with an ob­jec­tive, sym­pa­thet­ic eye that man­ages to see this tem­po­rary po­si­tion of dis­place­ment as a nec­es­sary place for all im­mi­grants to pass through on their jour­ney to an­oth­er life. He is nei­ther crit­i­cal nor sen­ti­men­tal about this fas­ci­nat­ing, se­cre­tive area.

Ma­haraj un­der­stands there is an un­spo­ken bond among those who find them­selves cross­ing bor­ders and those who fall on the pe­riph­ery of so­ci­ety. His nov­els and short sto­ries al­low read­ers to come to terms with their own lone­li­ness and con­fu­sion in a safe place with­in their own minds.For some time Ma­haraj has been qui­et­ly gar­ner­ing ac­co­lades for his nov­els and short sto­ry col­lec­tions that in­clude The In­ter­lop­er, Homer in Flight, The Writer and His Wife, The La­ga­hoo's Ap­pren­tice, The Book of Ifs and Buts, and The Per­fect Pledge. Our cur­rent Sun­day Arts Sec­tion (SAS) Book Club choice is his most re­cent–and ar­guably Ma­haraj's best–nov­el: The Amaz­ing Ab­sorb­ing Boy.

In this nov­el Ma­haraj tran­scends lit­er­ary bound­aries by cre­at­ing a whole new lit­er­ary realm in which a nov­el ex­ists with­in the frames that de­fine comics.Us­ing the im­agery and char­ac­ters of comics, Ma­haraj presents a wide-eyed, lone­ly Trinida­di­an im­mi­grant boy dis­cov­er­ing his new home in Cana­da, a place that feels like it is straight out of a com­ic book.The boy strug­gles to con­struct mean­ing in his life from the jux­ta­po­si­tion­al im­ages of Trinidad and Cana­da that col­lide in his mind. It is that un­spo­ken, un­seen ter­ri­to­ry in be­tween those im­ages that pro­vide the boy with mean­ing much like the gut­ter be­tween pic­tures in a com­ic cre­ate mean­ing. Ma­haraj's vivid, colour­ful im­agery trans­forms life in­to a sur­re­al land­scape.

Ma­haraj writes: "I re­mem­ber Un­cle Boysie telling me that Cana­da was so safe the po­lice­men wore nice red out­fits and rode on hors­es but ac­cord­ing to Roy the coun­try was like Gotham City with crooks around every cor­ner... I pic­tured them as shady Frank Miller char­ac­ters with bulging mus­cles and ma­chine guns pok­ing out from trench coats but the pho­to­graph fromthe pa­pers was of a group of boys my age. They kind of re­sem­bled some of my friends from Ma­yaro too."The Amaz­ing Ab­sorb­ing Boy is filled with vivid de­scrip­tions and poignant in­sights. It is a mag­i­cal, mean­ing­ful jour­ney that every im­mi­grant and lost soul takes.

Join us in the SAS Face­book group for more dis­cus­sion about Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj and his work.