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467 pages hardcover
Finished books available
US: Amistad Press, 2003
Canada: Thomas Allen, Oct 2002
Caribbean: Ian Randle Publishers
Holland: De Geus, 2005
UK: Tindal Street Press, Mar 2004
AUS/NZ: HarperCollins, Oct 2004
(Photo: Thomas King)
Austin Clarke is the winner of the 2002 Giller Prize, the 2003 Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the 16th Annual Trillium Prize for The Polished Hoe, which was also long-listed for the 2004 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He is also the winner of the 1990 W.O. Mitchell Prize, awarded each year to a Canadian writer who has produced an outstanding body of work and has served as a mentor for other writers. Clarke, who lives in Toronto, is the author of nine novels and six-short story collections, including Choosing His Coffin: The Best Stories of Austin Clarke, and the culinary memoir, Love and Sweet Food.
a novel by Austin Clarke
THE ENTIRE AFRICAN DIASPORA IMPLODES IN ONE MURDEROUS NIGHT ON THE WEST INDIAN ISLAND OF BIMSHIRE
- Winner of the 2003 Commonwealth Prize for Best Book
- Co-winner of the 2003 Trillium Book Award
- Winner of the 2002 Giller Prize
- Finalist for the 2004 Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award
- #1 national bestseller - over 17 weeks on bestseller lists
- A Book Sense 76 Pick
- A Costco Book Club Main Selection
- A Costco "Pennie's Picks" Tenth Anniversary Selection
- Featured The News Hour with Jim Lehrer and Good Morning America with Laura Bush
When an elderly West Indian woman calls the police to confess to murder, the call results in a shattering all-night vigil that brings together every element of the African diaspora in one epic sweep. Set on the post-colonial West Indian island of Bimshire in 1952, The Polished Hoe unravels over the course of twenty-four hours but spans the lifetime of one woman and the collective experience of a society informed by slavery.
As the novel opens, Mary Mathilda is confessing to Sargeant, a police officer she has known all her life. The man she claims to have murdered is Mr. Bellfeels,
the village plantation owner for whom she has worked for more than thirty years. Mary has also been Mr. Bellfeels' mistress for most of that time and is the mother of his only son, Wilberforce, a successful doctor.
What transpires through Mary's words and recollections is a deep meditation about the power of memory and the indomitable strength of the human spirit. Infused with Joycean overtones, this is a literary masterpiece that evokes the sensuality of the tropics and the tragic richness of Island culture.
PRAISE FOR THE POLISHED HOE
“An extraordinary tale of lust and oppression...a beautiful light-skinned "black" woman [is] forced by the ambition of her mother and the sexual appetite of her colonial master to live a dangerous double life as beneficiary and plaything of a society steeped in racial cruelty.” — THE TIMES, UK
“Respect to Tindal Street Press for bringing to the UK this soaring and sorrowful novel of Caribbean life.... Austin Clarke creates a seething panorama of sex, race and power.... The novel's language proves as lush, seductive - and dangerous - as its landscape.” — THE INDEPENDENT, UK
“The Polished Hoe's meandering orality, its slow-burning power, succeed movingly in asserting memory over the silent gaps in recorded history.” — THE GUARDIAN, UK
“The sensuality of Clarke's writing keeps his story alive. With vibrant characters and language, this is also one of those rare books you can smell.” — THE SYDNEY HERALD
“Out of a single act of retribution, Clarke has in fact spun an entire history, one in which freedom, love, and even languor all have their place.” — THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
“With an obvious affection for Caribbean cadence and its rum-soaked asides, Clarke unfolds Mary's story through the meandering statement she gives to the police after she has taken gruesome revenge on her 'master'.” — THE NEW YORKER
“The beauty of [The Polished Hoe] lies in the poetry of its telling and the marvelous voice of Mary-Mathilda. The value of the novel lies in its patient exploration of the sacrifices that are made for the sake of survival.” — THE WASHINGTON POST
“Clarke's waltzing speech rhythms and sly humor, reminiscent of V.S. Naipaul, camouflage the rising tension and the final shock, all of it contributing to a Wagnerian crescendo.” — THE BOSTON GLOBE
“[The Polished Hoe] is a tour de force of voice.... The island dialect is an appealing and accessible musical composition that Clarke uses to explore exquisite inconsistencies in Mary's character.” — THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“The sensual details paint a hypnotic setting.... The lyrical prose makes the book satisfy stylistically.” — THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE
“Clarke conjures lush, lyrical images that pull the reader deeper into his space.” — THE SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
“The Polished Hoe is an unqualified masterpiece.” — TORONTO STAR
“There is an utterly extraordinary and thoroughly compelling tragedy of Shakespearean scope and poetic intensity embedded in the text.. It ought to be both widely read and deeply remembered.” — THE GLOBE AND MAIL
“Compulsively readable.. This is an unforgettable novel.” — EDMONTON JOURNAL
“A magnificent, breathtaking plunge into the secret depths of human relations...a wonder-filled gem.” — OTTAWA CITIZEN
The Commonwealth Writers Prize 2003 for Best Book
“Beautifully drawn, elegantly rendered, a tour-de-force, The Polished Hoe is a wide-ranging epic in which the experience of several generations of women is masterfully realized. Beginning in a chilling statement made to a policeman after a murder, a woman's voice, speaking in the shadowy reaches of a plantation house in the 1950s slowly uncovers layers of disturbing history. But Mary-Mathilda is more than protagonist, she is a haunting that leaps outside the pages of the novel and indicts empires of colonialism and masculinity; she is the unsettled presence, the un-beheld, the un-held, the fetishised, un-loved. In her singular and final act of self-narration her mind is dangerous, her hand ultimately and inexorably nightmarish. The Polished Hoe is a richly crafted novel which eludes, defies categories; it is variously wistful and agonizing, ironic and sensual; a tragic tale, relentlessly wrought.” — Commonwealth Prize Judging Panel Chair, Dionne Brand
“Austin Clarke has transcended the earlier achievements of his already illustrious career with The Polished Hoe by composing a Faulknerian evocation of the Caribbean voice, recounting a somnolent, nocturnal dialogue between a black murderess and a black constable, both of whom confront the racist horror of their own past as they divulge the secrets of both their love and their loss.” — Christian Bök, Jan Geddes and Lesley Kruger, jurors for the Trillium Book Award
“Austin Clarke's The Polished Hoe is a symphony of Caribbean life and history that arranges the jangle of race and class, rage and passion into an eloquent composition, part slave narrative, part love ballad, part Shakespearean opera, sung against the backdrop of one woman's life. A master of narrative strategies and orchestrations, Clarke creates in Mary Mathilda an evocative and elegant voice that turns the written word into oral performance and fills our imaginations with the smells and sounds and silences of a world seldom seen and little understood.” — Giller Prize Jury Comments