Exploring the prevalence of madness in Caribbean texts written in English in the mid-twentieth century, Kelly Baker Josephs focuses on celebrated writers such as Jean Rhys, V. S. Naipaul, and Derek Walcott as well as on understudied writers such as Sylvia Wynter and Erna Brodber. Because mad figures appear frequently in Caribbean literature from French, Spanish, and English traditions--in roles ranging from bit parts to first-person narrators--the author regards madness as a part of the West Indian literary aesthetic. The relatively condensed decolonization of the anglophone islands during...