Lawrence Scott - Golconda - Our Voices, Our Lives

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	Photograph - William Hearle

			Golconda - Our Voices, Our Lives

			Golconda is the name of a former fortress on the Deccan plateau in India. It was also the name given in the 19th Century to a rich tract of land in the Naparimas of Southern Trinidad which was once a sugar-cane estate. Some 200 years after it's first mention in the historical records of Trinidad and Tobago, Golconda is now an extended village, rich in the memories of a complex and sometimes disturbing past. The writings which appear in this collection have grown out of a community, oral history project, in association with The Acadamy at UTT for Arts, Letters, Culture and Public affairs. In this imaginative, textured collection, past and present residents of Golconda recall life as it existed on the estate and it's enivirons. Captured in their own often poetic dialect, Golconda, Our Lives is a vivid recreation of an era now gone and a tribute to the indomitable spirit and purpose of a community.

Reviews

“We listen to actual voices and we share in real lives. This attractive and original book tells us a great deal about our nation’s evolution, and about a way of life, which has disappeared forever.” Professor Bridget Brereton - The Trinidad Express

This is a remarkable collection of gender testimony. By the same token, we see the basic harmony among the major races without any reference to ethnicity. We are now seeing the players in the scenario not as rulers and the ruled, not as African or Indian but as a people bonding together towards a common destiny to find a space in a very cosmopolitan world into which we are inexorably moving.” Professor Brinsley Samaroo - The Sunday Express (T&T)

“Most miraculous of all was their effort to build fresh community out of ethnic and cultural fragments left over from the colonial era, not only different castes, but Hindus and Muslims, Catholics, Anglicans and Presbyterians, not to mention Africans and Indians.” Professor Frank Birbalsingh - The Trinidad & Tobago Review

This coffee table book published by UTT combines history, ethnography, memoir, oral history and poetry. It is a riveting read. Debbie Jacob - The Trinidad Guradian,