Blessed Is the Fruit

Acclaimed Trinidadian writer Robert Antoni's second novel tells the life stories of two West Indian Lilla, the white mistress of a dilapidated colonial mansion, and Vel, the longtime black servant who lives with her. The two women have always kept an emotional distance by the accidents of their birth, but when Vel finds herself pregnant, Lilla puts her to bed in her own bedroom. Writing lyrically and convincingly in the voices of the two women themselves, Antoni lets them tell their life stories--a heady mixture of sex, religion, myth, and the musicality of their own inner languages. Antoni's first novel, Divina Trace won the Commonwealth Writers Prize.