description: Winner of the National Book Award for First “Beguiling stories . . . about an uncommonly fascinating part of the hemisphere” ( Time ). Easy in the Islands is a “stunning” collection of stories by one of contemporary America’s foremost journalists and fiction writers. Infused with the rhythms of the Caribbean, these vivid tales of paradise sought and paradise lost are as lush, steamy, and invigorating as the islands themselves ( The Washington Post ). A calypso singer named Lord Short Shoe consorts with a vampish black singer to bilk an American out of his only companion—a monkey. An island bureaucracy confounds the attempts of a hotel owner to get his dead mother out of the freezer and into a real grave—until he resorts to a highly unusual form of burial. Two poor islanders stumble into a high-class dance party and find themselves caught in a violent encounter that just might escalate into revolution. And a young woman sails off into the romantic tropics with the man of her dreams, only to learn the hard way—as Eve did—that paradise is just another place to leave behind. From fishing fleets in remote atolls too small to appear on any map to the sprawling barrios and yacht filled marinas of Miami, Bob Shacochis charts a course across a Caribbean that no tourist will recognize.
language: English
title: Easy in the Islands
titlecomplete: Easy in the Islands
genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Novels
ratings_count: 214
awards: awardedAt: 473414400000
name: National Book Award
category: First Work of Fiction
publisher: Amer Audio Prose Library Inc