Kwame Dawes has been named a 2019 Windham-Campbell Prize Recipient in poetryAn examination of grief and politics in a deftly written novel set in 1980s Jamaica.
Astonishing prose.
--Kirkus ReviewsWith.
dreamlike sequences, this is best suited for readers who enjoy character studies as well as lovers of Jamaican fiction.
--BooklistWith expressive description and languid cadence, Dawes deftly constructs a background that serves as an amorphous setting for the complicated experience of a grieving son.
With subtle yet lyrical description of internal struggles set against a foreign background, Bivouac serves as a deceptively symbolic read about the bleak and mirthless aspects of life and, subsequently, death.
--The Daily NebraskanBivouac has that kind of rich and luxurious writing that makes you believe there is a purpose to every element of the story.
--Tonstant Weader ReviewsDawes examines the complicated terrain of grief with uncanny insight and spare, lucid prose.
What unfolds is a story about a man, a family, and a country searching for answers and new hope.
--Maaza Mengiste, author of Beneath the Lion's GazeBivouac speaks in tongues so that the reader hears both the market and the courtroom, the orchestra of ancestral voices and the tone of individual conscience.
Kwame Dawes's novel laughs and mourns, claps hands for the inventive communal spirit, and wrings those same hands as a result of political malfeasance.
I was thrilled to see the writer channel his father's prose and summon pre-independence Jamaica.
As readers we should celebrate Bivouac because of its celebration of Jamaica and, by extension, the Caribbean.
The novel is replete with generational continuity and loyalty, from father to son, mother to child, the dead and the writer charged with the task of being custodian of their spirits.
--Fred D'Aguiar, author of Feeding the GhostsKwame Dawes brings the beauty and subtle rhythms of his poetic voice to this moving, dreamlike novel where the past i.
Akashic Books Bivouac, paperback/kwame dawes
