N.D.Williams’ Books

Is Communism finished? Will the public school system in New York city survive?

Set against political upheavals faraway in the Soviet Union in 1991, this novel follows the anxieties of an idealistic young man from the Caribbean who must contend with the breakdown of order in the city where he lives, and in the public school where he works. Through his eyes we witness violence in the streets, tensions in the school, the loneliness, grief, fear and stubborn hope that tear at the heart of immigrants and natives alike. The author brings a narrative intensity and insights to areas of darkness we have heard of in New York´s multifarious city.

Read an excerpt from this novel.

Order ” Ah Mikhail,O Fidel”

What could you say about the sea if you’re an islander?
It’s always there, around and beyond us: churning and receiving; washing up all the dead stuff of the world: sunken histories, green bottles with messages of lost ambitions, the loves we abort and throw away. On Sunday afternoons our islanders come down to the beach; they show off bathing costumes and muscles; they gleam and splash about like carefree porpoises; then, salty-skinned, with sand in their hair, they turn their backs on it and go home.
What could you say about old ladies if you’re an islander? They’re always among us, in straw hats and headkerchiefs, beneath and beyond us like ancestral graves. On Sunday mornings our old ladies go to church. They startle you in their starched church clothes many decades behind the times. If you stop to say, “Hello Aunt B.”, they lift their bowed heads; trembling fingers of memory reach for your face; they squint at you, then smile, for they’d seen you coming long before you had arrived; and they ask about your mother.
These days, of course, I know better.
Old ladies are somebody’s mother and somebody’s grandmother. They’re not waiting to die. They are dreaming souls, lighthouses to so many ships, ancient and new, adrift in the world.
As for the sea, it’s the last resting-place for the useless and the used; for skeletons and bones that rattle only what is real; a place for sunken vessels stripped of vanity riggings. You could step off our island and cross over seas, the way you cross borders from France into Spain, or Canada into the USA.
And you could call me caretaker of the sea.

Read Full Excerpt from ” Julie Mango”

Order “Julie Mango”

The Friendship of Shoes goes back to early pioneers of Caribbean storytelling like Samuel Selvon and V.S. Naipaul for its inspiration. There are strong characters, humor and stories within stories. The Caribbean experience is explored wherever its people can be found: in the city of New York or on the coastal lands of Guyana, in NY public school classrooms or the streets of Kingston, Jamaica. This new collection opens the doors for readers to discover once again the marvelous potential of the Caribbean imagination. Using familiar techniques of kinetic prose and precise observation Williams follows his characters as they join the movement of people around the globe. The Caribbean experience remains his focus. A teacher must try to adjust to the realities of New York city classrooms. A businessman returns to his island and finds the turmoil in the streets has crept into his soul. In this new collection stories within stories reveal the characters’ struggle with old fixations and new feelings about themselves and their place in the world.

 Order ” The Friendship Of Shoes”  A new collection of stories by N. D. Williams

 Read Excerpt from “The Friendship of Shoes”