David Dabydeen

David Dabydeen (born 9 December 1955) is a Guyanese-born critic, writer and novelist.

Dabydeen was born in Berbice, Guyana, his birth registered at New Amsterdam Registrar of Births as David Horace Clarence Harilal Sookram. He moved to London, England, to rejoin his father, attorney David Harilal Sookram.

He read English at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts with honours. He then gained a Ph.D. in 18th-century literature and art at University College London in 1982, and was awarded a research fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford. He is a Professor at the Centre for British Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick in Coventry, United Kingdom. He is a member of UNESCO's Executive Board. He is the author of four novels, three collections of poetry and several works of non-fiction and criticism. His first book, Slave Song (1984), a collection of poetry, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Quiller-Couch Prize. A further collection, Turner: New and Selected Poems, was published in 1994, and reissued in 2002; the title-poem, Turner is an extended sequence or verse novel responding to a painting by J. M. W. Turner, Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhoon coming on (1840).

His first novel, The Intended (1991), the story of a young Asian student abandoned in London by his father, won the Guyana Prize for Literature. Disappearance (1993) tells the story of a young Guyanese engineer working on the south coast of England who lodges with an elderly woman. The Counting House (1996) is set at the end of the nineteenth century and narrates the experiences of an Indian couple whose hopes of a new life in colonial Guyana end in tragedy. The story explores historical tensions between indentured Indian workers and Guyanese of African descent. His most recent novel, A Harlot's Progress (1999), is based on a series of pictures painted by William Hogarth in 1732 and develops the story of Hogarth's black slave boy. Through the character of Mungo, Dabydeen challenges traditional cultural representations of the slave.

Dabydeen has been awarded the title of fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is the second West Indian writer (V.S. Naipaul was the first) and the only Guyanese writer to receive the title.

In 2001 Dabydeen wrote and presented The Forgotten Colony, a BBC Radio 4 programme exploring the history of Guyana. His one-hour documentary Painting the People was broadcast by BBC television in 2004.

David Dabydeen's latest novel, Our Lady of Demerara, was published in 2004. The Oxford Companion to Black British History, co-edited by Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, appeared in 2007.

In 2010 Dabydeen was appointed as Guyana’s Ambassador to China.^[1]

Bibliography

• Slave Song, 1984
• Caribbean Literature: A Teacher's Handbook, 1985
• The Black Presence in English Literature (editor), 1985
• A Reader's Guide to West Indian and Black British Literature (with Nana Wilson-Tagoe), 1987
• Hogarth's Blacks: Images of Blacks in 18th-Century English Art, 1987
• India in the Caribbean (editor with Brinsley Samaroo), 1987
• Coolie Odyssey, 1988
• Handbook for Teaching Caribbean Literature, 1988
• Black Writers in Britain 1760-1890 (editor with Paul Edwards), 1991
• The Intended, 1991
• Disappearance, 1993
• Turner: New and Selected Poems, 1994
• Across the Dark Waters: Ethnicity and Indian Identity in the Caribbean, 1996
• The Counting House, 1996
• A Harlot's Progress, 1999
• No Island is an Island: Selected Speeches of Sir Shridath Ramphal (editor with John Gilmore), 2000
• Turner, 2002
• Our Lady of Demerera, 2004
• Slave Song, 2005
• The Oxford Companion to Black British History (co-editor, with John Gilmore and Cecily Jones, 2007)
• Molly and the Muslim Stick (2008)

Prizes and awards

• 1984 Commonwealth Poetry Prize - Slave Song
• 1984 Quiller-Couch Prize - Slave Song
• 1991 Guyana Prize for Literature - The Intended
• 1999 James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), shortlist - A Harlot's Progress
• 2004 Raja Rao Award for Literature (India)

Notes

1. ^ http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/warwick_professor_appointed_as_guyana146s_ambassador_to_china1

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Name	Dabydeen, David
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Date of birth	9 December 1955
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