Minty Alley
A Novel

Minty Alley is an early classic of modern Caribbean writing in English. It is the only novel written by C.L.R. James and belongs to the Beacon period of Caribbean literature in the late 1920s and 1930s. C.L.R. James promised another novel after Minty Alley, first published in 1936, but that novel never emerged.

Minty Alley and James's short stories establish the compassionate creative imagination that was to illuminate a brilliant social, political and historical analysis of the Caribbean and the world at large. They also underline a special dimension of the spirit behind his creative critical writing. As Kenneth Ramchand states in his introduction, the present reprint of Minty Alley 'offers an opportunity to sketch out some of the continuities in the West Indian literary scene, and to introduce a new generation to an important and interesting work by the most distinguished West Indian of our time and his'.