Book recommendations for Christmas

November 21, 2006 8:02 AM

GiftFilter: Looking for books about either the Mexican day of the dead (think Under the Volcano) or plantation life in the West Indies (think Wide Sargasso sea.)

Fiction preferred, but any book recommendations on those subjects (and all manner of related topics) appreciated.

posted by fire&wings to Writing & Language (2 answers total)

Richard Hughes's A High Wind in Jamaica begins on a Plantation, but then gets progressively stranger and more disturbing. Think: modern-day pirates, the loss of childhood innocence, the almost-casual demise of main characters, etc. If the recepient has a taste for the mordant, the macabre, or the perverse, then --by all means--full speed ahead.
posted by Chrischris at 8:50 AM on November 21, 2006

Not about either topic, but perhaps somewhere on the same map: The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Álvaro Mutis; a book comprising a series of seven novellas variously set in Colombia, Panama, Ecuador & elsewhere; the titular Maqroll being an itinerant sailor of uncertain nationality who repeatedly entangles himself in illegal, hopeless or tragic schemes.
posted by misteraitch at 12:51 PM on November 21, 2006