Paule Marshall, who is something of a cuisinière, specializing in Barbadian dishes, has concocted a novel of West Indian life that will greatly enhance her reputation. Not to mince words, "The Chosen Place, the Timeless People," in my opinion, is the best novel to be written by an American black woman, one of the two important black novels of the 1960's (the other being William Demby's "The Catacombs"), and one of the four or five most impressive novels ever written by a black American. (p. 4)

"The Chosen Place, the Timeless People" is a parable of Western civilization and its relations with the undeveloped world. The setting of the novel is a Caribbean island—and, more precisely, its most "backward" and unassimilable region, called Bournehills. Bourne Island, as the name implies, forms a symbolic boundary between the cultures of Europe and Africa, between the forces of progress and...