Overview

A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes is set against the lush, volatile backdrop of 19th-century Jamaica. A High Wind in Jamaica is a haunting, darkly humorous exploration of innocence, imagination, and the eerie unpredictability of childhood. When a hurricane devastates their plantation home, the Bas-Thornton children are sent to England for safety. But fate has other plans: their ship is overtaken by pirates, and what follows is a surreal, unforgettable voyage through lawless waters and even murkier moral depths. Unlike any ""children's adventure"" before it, this novel shatters romantic illusions of piracy and youth. Hughes writes children not as sweet caricatures, but as mysterious, instinct-driven creatures-capable of joy, cruelty, wonder, and indifference in equal measure. Originally published in 1929 and praised by the likes of William Golding and Graham Greene, A High Wind in Jamaica is at once a savage satire and a chilling psychological odyssey. It's a literary classic that continues to provoke, disturb, and mesmerize readers nearly a century later.

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9781515464785

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Richard Hughes (1900-1976) was a British novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his psychologically acute and formally innovative fiction. Born in Surrey and educated at Oxford, Hughes began his literary career in poetry and drama before turning to the novel.He achieved lasting recognition with A High Wind in Jamaica (1929), a maritime tale that unsettled expectations of adventure fiction by exploring childhood innocence, moral ambiguity, and the unpredictable nature of violence. The novel's spare prose and subtle psychological insight secured its reputation as a modern classic.Hughes later undertook the ambitious historical cycle The Human Predicament, examining power, religion, and political upheaval in seventeenth-century Europe. Though he published relatively few novels, his work is marked by intellectual rigor, stylistic precision, and a willingness to challenge conventional narrative

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