Return to Arcadia

Fiction. Afro-Caribbean Studies. When at age 51, Joshua Eclair--victim of a pygmalianism gone awry--emerges from amnesia in a hospital in Montreal, he must explore what makes him want to erase his identity, and must undertake the process of exorcising what has brought him to this pass. This is the gripping story of a man's search for sanity set in the fictional Caribbean Isabella Island and the various places Joshua has fled to: Montreal, New York, Tallahassee, London, Paris and Madrid. This is a finely accomplished novel about a very modern predicament: the malformed dysfunctional identity in the global village. H. Nigel Thomas immigrated to Canada from the Caribbean Island of St. Vincent. He has been a teacher with the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal, and professor of American literature at Universite Laval. He resides in the Montreal suburb of Greenfield Park.

H Nigel Thomas was born in St Vincent. He has been a teacher with the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal, and professor of literature at Universite Laval. He resided in the Montreal suburb of Greenfield Park. He is the author of Spirits in the Dark (novel), which was finalist for the QFW Prize, Behind the Face of Winter (novel), and Why We Write: Conversations with African Canadian Poets and Novelists (criticism).