Martin Mordecai’s
Free
is a lyrical yet unflinching examination of the ruinous intimacies sustained by and sustaining plantation slavery. Set around Jamaica’s Christmas Rebellion of 1831–32 and framed around three characters who are free themselves, but hedged in by the oppressive protocols of slavery,
is an extended meditation on violence, memory, community, love and forgiveness. Mordecai uses the ranges and registers of the creole continuum to seduce readers into a wrenching engagement with the deformation wrought by slavery upon everyone and everything it touched.