Abstract
Neil Bissoonodath came to Canada as a young Trinidadian student in 1973 and has never looked back. He studied French at York University, completing his B.A. in 1977. For several years he taught French and English as a second language in Toronto before becoming a full-time writer.
Bissoondath exploded onto the Canadian literary scene in 1985 with the release of his first book, a collection of short stories under the title, Digging Up the Mountains. While some had labelled Bissoondath's success a fairy-tale story come true, time has shown that his career as a writer is based on more than mere luck. Three years later, his first full-length novel, A Casual Brutality, met with the same high acclaim and firmly established him as a writer to be reckoned with now and in the future.
The short stories of Digging Up the Mountains are concerned with the alienation and helplessness felt by those who have lost control of their lives because of political and cultural changes. With sensitivity and precision, Bissoondath captures the emotional turmoil of men and women forced to submit to the oppression and, often, violence of their society, whether caused by tyranny, poverty, or prejudice. He offers no judgments, no solutions, and the result is a realism which is profoundly depressing.
A Casual Brutality presents the reader with a similar picture. The main character, Raj Ramsingh, leaves the narrow confines of his West Indian home to study medicine in Toronto only to return after several years with his Canadian wife and his son. His dream of helping his struggling homeland becomes a nightmare of racial terror and violence, and the defeat of an idealism that could not survive in an environment of hatred, fear, and poverty.
In his first two books, Bissoondath echoes the concerns and beliefs of his uncle, V. S. Naipaul, whose twenty books have won him international renown. Bissoondath, however, writes with the sharpness and lack of sentimentality of a younger generation born in a world where tradition and the family no longer provide the guidelines for living or the means for survival.
The man behind the printed words is much happier and more enthusiastic than the characters he has created. Talking from his home in Montreal, Neil Bissoondath made it clear that he is very much in control of his own life, confident, happy, and looking forward to the future.