Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

"I wanted to be able to do for Barbados what Chamoiseau did for Martinique and, one could say, what James Joyce did for Ireland. But it is interesting that I would go back to Barbados. When you're not born in the country in which you are living, when you think about it seriously, there are lots of very small things you never know and learn which, when you multiply them, really is the crystallization of the fact that you are a foreigner."

— Austin Clarke, talking about his new novel The Polished Hoe in an interview in January Magazine. He reveals, among other things, that he can't remember how many novels he's written, that he doesn't at all like Naipaul, & that he accidentally deleted the electronic text of this latest book twice while he was writing it.