Trust the Darkness: My Life As a Writer

'How could I change an outcome that was set in concrete?...This meant plunging into the darkness...'Jamaican writer Anthony C. Winkler has been called 'the unrivalled master of comic writing in the West Indies. Many readers regard his novel "The Lunatic" as among the funniest books in any language. "Trust the Darkness" tells the story of Winkler's development as a writer, and much more. The 'enigmatic Winkler', as one reviewer called him, reveals a troubled childhood. Expelled from school in Montego Bay at the age of fifteen, he spent the next few years getting increasingly frustrated: Winkler knew that he wanted to finish school, and to be a writer, but the future looked dark. Then his mother sent him to the USA; and in that country, after years of deprivation, he gradually found the means to fulfill his ambitions.Over the years Winkler has learnt to trust the darkness. Often, stumped in his effort to find a creative resolution in his writings, he has learnt to begin writing without knowing where he will end up, to plunge into the darkness and tap 'at the roadbed of the narrative like a blind man with a cane searching for a sidewalk'.Teeming with the offbeat occurrences and character types found in his fiction, "Trust the Darkness" is a supremely entertaining chronicle of a life full of hardships and rewards, one often lived on the very edge of darkness.