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Summer Lightning (short story collection)

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1986 Olive Senior short story collection

Summer Lightning
AuthorOlive Senior
PublisherLongman
Publication date1986
AwardsCommonwealth Writer's Prize (1987)
Big Jubilee Read (2022)
ISBN978-0582786271

Summer Lightning and other stories is a 1986 collection of short stories by Jamaican writer Olive Senior. It won the 1987 Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was selected for the 2022 Big Jubilee Read, a list of 70 titles by Commonwealth writers.

In A History of Literature in the Caribbean: English- and Dutch-speaking countries the stories are described as "scintillating evocations of life in rural Jamaica". Booker Prize winner Marlon James included it in his "My 10 Favorite Books" in a 2016 New York Times piece, saying "The entire future of Caribbean prose is mapped out in this collection of stories, and I don't know a single Caribbean writer who doesn't reread it often".

Senior has said of this book: "I believe Summer Lightning to be a true expression of everyday life in that part of the world I describe, i.e., deep rural Jamaica, in terms of behaviours, beliefs, practices narrated and language used."

Story titles

The stories in the book are:

  • Summer lightning
  • Love orange
  • Country of the one eye god
  • Ascot
  • Bright Thursdays
  • Real old time t'ing
  • Do angels wear brassieres?
  • Confirmation day
  • The boy who loved ice cream
  • Ballad

References

  1. Thieme, John (12 July 2019). "'Mixed Worlds': Olive Senior's Summer Lightning". Kunapipi. 16 (2). ISSN 0106-5734. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
  2. O'Callaghan, Evelyn (1986). "Review of Summer Lightning and Other Stories". Journal of West Indian Literature. 1 (1): 92–94. ISSN 0258-8501. JSTOR 23019657.
  3. "Commonwealth Writers' Prize Regional Winners 1987–2007" (PDF). Commonwealth Foundation. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 October 2007. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
  4. "A literary celebration of Queen Elizabeth II's record-breaking reign". BBC. 17 April 2022. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
  5. Victor Ramraj (2001). "Short fiction". In Arnold, Albert James; Rodríguez-Luis, Julio; Dash, J. Michael (eds.). A History of Literature in the Caribbean: English- and Dutch-speaking countries. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 217. ISBN 978-90-272-3448-3. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
  6. James, Marlon (13 May 2016). "My 10 Favorite Books". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
  7. Evans, Lucy (2014). "Rural Communities". Communities in Contemporary Anglophone Caribbean Short Stories. Oxford University Press. p. 42. ISBN 978-1-78138-118-2.
  8. Catalogue record for "Summer Lightning". Worldcat. OCLC 39458693. Retrieved 19 April 2022.
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