The Bone Readers de Jacob Ross

Abstract

How does one put the Caribbean on the map of crime fiction? Or crime fiction on the map of the Caribbean? Through a study of Jacob Ross’s The Bone Readers (2016), this article looks at the politics of the English-speaking Caribbean crime novel, a genre that has only recently emerged. It shows that the novel’s multidimensional plot and generic and linguistic hybridity enable it to represent the complex history and geographies of Grenada, Ross’s country of origin, as well as its struggle for democracy. And that, conversely, Ross manages to reterritorialize in his novel a European/colonial narrative tradition that may at first have seemed culturally and politically alien.

Keywords

• Ross (Jacob)
• The Bone Readers
• detective novel
• black novel
• Anglo-Caribbean literature
• Caribbean