Peter Kempadoo

Peter Lauchmonen Kempadoo is a writer from Guyana. He was born on a sugar estate in 1926. He has worked as a writer, broadcaster and development worker.

His novel "Guyana Boy" (1960; re-issued 2002) draws on his own life as the son of sugar workers to portray a world lacking in freedom, but where the workers struggle to maintain their identity as Madrassis in their rice plots, their fishing expeditions and in the feasts and festivities their ancestors brought from India.

He lived for some years in Barbados, and has worked in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, carrying out rural development work among grass-roots communities, but has mainly been based in the UK where he first moved in 1953. He lives in Coventry, England.

In addition to "Guyana Boy", he has written "Old Thom's Harvest" (1965). His work has been anthologised in "The Sun's Eye" and "My Lovely Native Land".