Minty Alley provides a rich literary rendering of working-class life in colonial Trinidad . . . its rediscovery and republication is an important event

Unforgettable . . . Groundbreaking

[Minty Alley] is funny, gossipy and meandering . . . James uses Haynes’s shy silence as a space to be filled with each characters’ rich backstory, creating a historical soap opera more often relayed directly in the characters’ Trinidadian vernacular

In this novel, ordinary people – in this case primarily Caribbean women – display the extraordinary creativity and persistence in the face of life’s challenges that’s exemplary of Caribbean culture. It is near impossible to fully appreciate the artistic and political merits of James’ later work without having read Minty Alley’s vivid description of Trinidadian subaltern life

A novel written nearly a hundred years ago that brings the past alive with such charm, vitality and humour

Deservedly, James’s work is undergoing a revival . . . The strength and value of the ordinary man is a through line in James’s diverse body of work, and nowhere is this interest more evident than in Minty Alley

Light-hearted, comic, occasionally sobering, always engrossing, the novel is a lovely and captivating read

‘Ground-breaking… [A] fictional masterpiece