At the Bottom of the River

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What to expect

At the Bottom of the River is Jamaica Kincaid’s first published work, a selection of inter-connected prose poems told from the perspective of a young Afro-Caribbean girl.

Collecting pieces written for the New Yorker and the Paris Review between 1978 and 1982, including the seminal ‘Girl’, these stunning works announced a fully-formed, generational talent and firmly established the themes that Kincaid would continue to return to in her later work: the loss of childhood, the fractious nature of mother–daughter relationships, the intangible beauty of the natural world, and the striving for independence in a colonial landscape.

Powerful and lyrical, this is an unforgettable collection from a unique and necessary literary voice.

Part of the Picador Collection, a new series showcasing the best of modern literature.

Critics Review

  • This book will burn on your shelf. It is too choked with love to incite envy, too humble for admiration, and still too startling to escape astonishment

    Derek Walcott

  • What a writer – elegant, uncompromising, simultaneously direct and layered and complex.

    Ali Smith

  • I’ve read everything by Jamaica Kincaid, and I’ve still never read anyone like her. If you are new to Kincaid, I envy you

    Jackie Kay

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