A State of Independence — Caryl Philips

When Bertram Francis returns to his native St. Kitts after a twenty-year sojourn in England, the mangy, flamboyant island that greets him is astonishingly unchanged. Yet time and the bitternes of his island-bound family and friends have made him a stranger among familiar faces and landsmarks. A State of Independence recounts the first three days of Bertram's inauspicious homecoming, which coincides with the island's liberation from British rule.