The stories in A Thief in the Village depict the everyday life of Jamaicans as Berry experienced it in his youth.

The stories feature the Jamaican dialect, keen observations of the details of ordinary Jamaican life, and vividly drawn characters based on villagetypes he knew long ago. Spiderman Anancy (1988) is a retelling of Jamaican folk tales in which universals of human experience are pointed out in stories intended to teach young people about life. Ajeemah and His Son (1992; see separate entry, Vol.9) is about slavery in Jamaica in the 1800s. It also features sharply observed details of rural life expressed in powerful and dignified language.