SOURCE: "Going to Extremes and Other Tales of the New World," in Washington Post Book World, Vol. XIX, No. 5, January 22, 1989, p. 4.

In the following excerpt, Morris gives qualified praise for A Casual Brutality.

The narrator of A Casual Brutality is Raj Ramsingh, an "East Indian" born in Casaquemada (a fictional island not far from Trinidad). He has qualified as a doctor in Canada, and has married a white Canadian. Although he knows that the socio-political situation in Casaquemada (Spanish for burnt house) is unstable, Ramsingh persuades himself he must return. He goes back to the island, with his Canadian wife, Jan, and their infant son. Jan must adapt to an unfamiliar culture, which includes her husband's extended family; and Raj Ramsingh finds himself increasingly entangled in the racial and political complications of Casaquemada, a society on the edge of anarchy.

Neil Bissoondath was born in Trinidad in 1955 but...