Angel

First published to great acclaim in 1987, Angel begins in 1951, when the workers of Grenada revolted against the white estate owners, moving forward to 1983 when the US invaded to put an end to a radical experiment that had turned violently in on itself. At the story's heart are the headstrong Angel and her mother, Doodsie.

What makes Angel such a rewarding novel to return to, especially in this revised new edition, is the seamless movement between the warmth and tensions of family life and the seriousness of irruptive, life-changing political conflict.

"[There is] a richness, a thickness, a stinging slangy that-there thingyness of observation and detail…"

Robert Nye, The Guardian

Merle Collins was born in 1950 in Aruba. She was deeply involved in the Grenadian revolution and served as a research coordinator for the Government of Grenada. Her second novel, The Colour of Forgetting, was published in 1995, and her short-story collection The Ladies are Upstairs by Peepal Tree in 2011. Her third and most recent poetry collection is Lady in a Boat (Peepal Tree, 2003). She teaches Caribbean Literature at the University of Maryland.