Agymah Kamau’s first novel, Flickering Shadows (1996), was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, Quality Paperback Book Club's New Voices Award and was listed among the Library Journal's top 20 first novels of 1996. His second novel, Pictures of a Dying Man (1999), was listed among the Village Voice's best 25 books of 1999, won the Commonwealth of Virginia Literary Award, ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Award, was a finalist and received honorable mention for the Gustavus Myers Book Award, and was nominated for the Governor's Award for the Arts (Virginia). In 2003 he received Virginia Commonwealth University’s Alumnus of the Year Award. His third novel is under consideration. He currently is working on his fourth manuscript of prose fiction.
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Pictures of a Dying ManA Novel
As Isamina Belle confided later, when she stepped in her front door and saw her husband hanging from a rope tied to a joist, with his head bowed as if in prayer and his feet dangling inches from the floor, the first thing she did was to hasten and fling open all the windows in the house.
Pictures of a Dying Man:A Novel -
Pictures of a Dying ManA Novel
… at the same instant that the bolt of lightning snaked from the sky into Miss Lord’s yard and Miss Marshall’s fowl-cock spoke, the lock on the bell tower in the town square struck six o’clock and Henri the undertaker’s assistant was just about to step into the room where two coffins sat on their carriages when he stopped in the doorway thinking he coulda swear them coffins was lined up parallel next to one another when he left last night, oui? Now they head-to-head, forming a V, as if the duppies get together in the night to make jumbie conversation.
Pictures of a Dying Man:A Novel -
Pictures of a Dying ManA Novel
… it brought to mind another night when Ma and I were sleeping and Pa came in, drunk as usual. For some reason he and Ma started shouting and next thing I know, PAKS! He delivered a slap to Ma’s face. Ma held her face. The house was silent. Then she uncoiled and began windmilling her hands, hitting him every which way and yelling, You come in here with your drunk self and hit me? Eh? In front of your son? That the kind of example you setting? And Pa hitting her back, but not with any force. After a while he walked back out of the house and Ma lay in bed sniffling into her pillow…
Pictures of a Dying Man:A Novel
“Kamau’s intriguing second novel gives new meaning to the notion that seeing is not always believing . . . Kamau writes in a lilting, unaffected style with real compassion for his characters. This is a haunting, powerful, beautiful story.” —Library Journal [on Pictures of a Dying Man]
“Dazzling in its playful, poetic language; haunting in its authentic evocation of a place; and totally original in narrative voice, Flickering Shadows is a gem, a work of pure enchantment. To read it is to fall under an island spell. Tragic yet uplifting, this is fiction at its best.” —Lee Smith, author of Saving Grace and The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed
“Here is a compelling new voice from the Caribbean . . . Reading Kwadwo Agymah Kamau’s extraordinary first novel calls to mind Vic Reid’s masterful capturing of the cadences and idioms of Caribbean speech; Erna Brodber’s mesmerizing poetic lyricism; Wilson Harris’s provocative magical realism; Sam Selvon’s seductive humor; and George Lamming’s political imperatives.” —Daryl Cumber Dance, editor, Folklore from Contemporary Jamaicans & Fifty Caribbean Writers [on Flickering Shadows]
