48 pages 1 hour read

Augustown: A Novel

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016

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Summary and Study Guide

Overview

Augustown is a 2016 literary fiction novel by Jamaican poet, essayist, and novelist Kei Miller. The novel juxtaposes the beginning of the Jamaican religious movement Bedwardism in 1920 with an “autoclaps” or calamity in 1982 in Augustown, Jamaica, a fictional village based on August Town, a neighborhood in Kingston, Jamaica. The novel explores themes of identity, religion, folklore, and the importance of history for contemporary life. Augustown won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde. It was shortlisted for the PEN Open Book Award, the HWA Endeavour Ink Gold Crown, and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and nominated for the Green Carnation Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction.

Miller was born in Jamaica and attended the University of the West Indies, a school referenced in Augustown. He earned his MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University and completed a PhD at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of a number of books of poetry, essay collections, short story anthologies, and novels. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has taught in numerous creative writing programs, including at the University of Iowa, York University, and the University of Exeter.

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