At the Bottom of the River (Kincaid Jamaica); Picador, 2024

At the Bottom of the River is Jamaica Kincaid’s first published work, a selection of inter-connected prose poems told from the perspective of a young Afro-Caribbean girl.

Collecting pieces written for the New Yorker and the Paris Review between 1978 and 1982, including the seminal ‘Girl’, these stunning works announced a fully-formed, generational talent and firmly established the themes that Kincaid would continue to return to in her later work: the loss of childhood, the fractious nature of mother–daughter relationships, the intangible beauty of the natural world, and the striving for independence in a colonial landscape.

Powerful and lyrical, this is an unforgettable collection from a unique and necessary literary voice.