Butterfly in the Wind
Peepal Tree, 1990
"Lakshmi Persaud maintains the high tradition of Indian Caribbean writings set by V.S. Naipaul."
India Weekly
"This is a book which is beautifully written with an entrancing story and an understated political insight into what it is to be a child."
Leeds Other Paper, UK
"The empathy with which Lakshmi Persaud writes of the natural world and the warmth of her descriptions suggests that she learnt much from the place where she grew up."
The Sunday Observer, UK
"It is an authentic chronicle of self-development in one colonial situation…. It is intense, poignant and eloquent."
Toronto South Asian Review
"we were exhilarated by the richness and tenderness of the novel."
Barbados Advocate
"We must be grateful for the sensitive portrait which Lakshmi Persaud has given us of a way of living so often misinterpreted only because it is different or exotic and not given the chance to be seen as simply human."
Barbados Daily Nation
"This unassuming and sweet-natured book is above all a tremendous celebration of life and its simple pleasures"
The Sunday Times
Sastra
Peepal Tree, 1993
"Sastra is a beautiful, moving and inspiring novel created by a gifted, sensitive and intelligent writer."
The Sunday Guardian
"I am reminded of E.M. Forster, the same carefully crafted seemingly matter of fact style which can unexpectedly rise through image and phrase to the intensity of poetry... A creative work like Sastra can be read at several levels. One can read it for the love story. Or one might be sensitive to the backdrop to the novel namely the ethnic cultural divisions in the Trinidad society in the 1950s. Or one can read it as a depiction of the ancient struggle between fate and individual choice."
Lloyd Searwar, The Mirror, Guyana
"This is a beautiful, moving and inspiring novel... created by a gifted, sensitive and intelligent writer. It is a mature piece of fiction which is certain to withstand the passage of time or the limitation of setting... It is a novel of the beauty and and the terror of life itself. It is a novel about love, intense love which crashes the boundaries of conventional reason. It is a novel of pain, loss and anguish which threaten to crush the human spirit. It is a novel of change and of coming to grips with the relentless inevitability of change. It is a novel of the triumph of the individual will."
Dr Bhoe Tewarie, Principal and former Head, Dept of English, St Augustine, University of the West Indies
"At its considerable best Sastra is impressive work. It recognizes the value of community, its conventions and ceremonies, and is a record of gradual change. It seems to acknowledge the problematic workings of fate. It celebrates emotional honesty and the rewards of responsible choice."
Mervyn Morris, Reader in English Literature, University of the West Indies
"There is poetry in this tale. Its delicate shadings of generational relationships give its character strength and durability. It is resilient seeking betterment through individual and collective endeavour. The novel is a page from Caribbean Indian life and a cameo of the larger contemporary world."
India Weekly, London
"To enter the world of Sastra, is to enter a world whose pace is controlled by custom, ritual and ceremony, a world where the delicate play of head and eyes and shoulders can express the strongest emotions, where passion can declare itself without the loss of modesty; a world wrapped in manners that are not the exterior polish of those with social skills but the outflow of natural grace, and delicate feeling. It is like walking at night on the grounds at Divali Nagar, and knowing there is no danger in the crowd, no evil in the air. And feeling that you are part of something very abstract and very physically there."
Professor Kenneth Ramchand, University of the West Indies & Colgate University USA
"Lakshmi Persaud has given us the key with which to unlock a window upon Trinidadian-Indian life which has hitherto remained closed. It is a fascinating discovery."
Pamela Beshoff, Writer and Journalist, Weekly Gleaner
"a ‘song of love and life and hope’ and a powerful expression of the strength and will of the free Caribbean woman."
Chris Searle, Morning Star
"This is a love story of an unusual, even rare beauty."
Sunday Gleaner
Order Now
For the Love of My Name
Peepal Tree, 2000
" 'For the Love of my Name' is a Caribbean tale of tyranny and oppression, of love and hate, of hope and despair, brilliantly told and powerfully written."
Calvin Bowen, Sunday Gleaner, Jamaica.
"Honest, Fearless and also generous, this is the book for the millennium, one to shake comfortable assumptions of rectitude into recognition of the abyss into which some of us may fall while others fail to care. I couldn’t put it down. It is also, in a sense a book which marks the maturing of Caribbean Literature"
Pamela Beshoff, Writer and Journalist, The Weekly Gleaner, UK
"For the Love of my Name is a moving, disturbing profound novel. It is an important novel to be coming out at this moment in history, as we turn into a new millennium and inevitably must think about the qualities and values that might – will – should—characterise human societies in the future...Indeed in so far as I have read another novel that deals with some of these issues in a comparable way, then the great Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s 'Anthills of the Savannah' is the book that comes closest. It was shortlisted for the Booker prize: I would hope that the judges for the year 2000 Booker pay due attention to Lakshmi’s book, it is of that quality and originality."
Dr Stewart Brown, Poet and co-editor of 'The Oxford book of Caribbean Short Stories', Senior Lecturer in African and Caribbean Literature, University of Birmingham, UK
"For those of us who lived through those times the novel will give meaning to experiences which we just could not deal with at the time and which we have sought to put aside but with which we must now come to terms. When younger people ask about those days this is the novel from your own personal library, however small, that you will wish to put in their hands."
Lloyd Searwar, Head, Foreign Service Institute, Guyana
"Honest, Fearless and also generous, this is the book for the millennium, one to shake comfortable assumptions of rectitude into recognition of the abyss into which some of us may fall while others fail to care. I couldn’t put it down. It is also, in a sense a book which marks the maturing of Caribbean Literature"
Pamela Beshoff - The Weekly Gleaner
Order Now
Raise the Lanterns High
Black Amber, 2004
"Hypnotic and lyrical, this mesmerising tale brings to mind Amy Tan at her best."
Memsahib Magazine
"Centering around a fascinating emotional dilemma, this book is sprinkled with exquisite nuggets of description and alarming insights into human nature"
Publishing News
"'Myths of old India and realities of the contemporary Caribbean, ingeniously blended into a fast-moving narrative that both informs and delights; the enchantment of fairy tale and the learning of a scholar seamlessly interwoven. As in her previous novel 'For the Love of my Name,' Persaud again deploys formidable narrative skill."
Professor Frank Birbalsingh, York University, Canada
Professor Frank Birbalsingh's review of 'Raise the Lanterns High' in the Trinidad and Tobago Review, Vol 26 No11, November 1st, 2004.
"Tradition and culture mixed with intrigue make this an exciting novel to read."
BBC Asian Network
"Raise the Lanterns High - an absorbing read. Lakshmi has been compared to Nobel laureate VS Naipaul. We at Veena actively prefer Lakshmi."
Veena Indian Arts Review, Editorial, Apr 2004
"In her observations of human frailty and cunning, Lakshmi Persaud delights us with her style that is at once sharp and delicate, and warm and ironic. Her new novel Raise the Lanterns High is a subtle exploration of how a woman’s impulse to shake off the weight of centuries of oppressive tradition is constrained by the ties of love. For me the fascination of the book lies partly in understanding how the Indian diaspora negotiates its relationships with the idea of home and India as the mother country. I hope this book will play its part in placing Indo-Caribbean women’s writing on the literary map of the world."
Rahila Gupta (author), Southhall Black Sisters Association, London.
"I've just finished reading your last novel and I just wanted to tell you that I found it totally gripping throughout... I was particularly impressed - and moved - by the way you effortlessly glided between the worlds of the 1960s and the history of the suttee queens 200 years before. The structure worked beautifully in my opinion. Your material was absolutely riveting."
Angela Thirlwell, author of "William and Lucy: The Other Rossettis"
"Absorbing and challenging, you'll be ensnared from the start."
Zee TV
"'Raise the Lanterns High' brings to mind a direct comparison with the writing of her fellow countryman, VS Naipaul... they both capture the beauty of Trinidad in a mellifluous literary style and where Naipaul leans towards dark humour and melancholy, Lakshmi Persaud creates a gentler lilting prose... 'Raise the Lanterns High' is a hauntingly bittersweet novel about female emancipation in 18th century India and modern day Trinidad"
Lopa Patel for www.redhotcurry.com
"'Raise the Lanterns High' is another masterful creation by the versatile Caribbean novelist Lakshmi Persaud... The book is a must read for all those who still do not understand the root and impact of customs and practices in the Indian culture."
"It is about strong women who anchor family, culture and community, who are educated and enlightened; who are thought leaders in their respective domains; and who would be leaders in any environment or context but who lack the power to make things happen the way they want it or even to live their lives as they would prefer and who do not even enjoy the basic right of freedom of choice."
Dr. Bhoendradatt Tewarie,
University of the West Indies
"Powerful and poetic"
Time Out
Order Now
Daughters of Empire
Peepal Tree, 2012
"The pantheon of Caribbean writers is long and honourable...
After the first phalanx, the likes of Naipaul, Brathwaite, Selvon, Mittelholzer, Walcott, we have a new rank of interpreters. These have moved beyond the era of decolonization, into the integration of the former subjects and their former overlords. It is as dizzying as it is complex. Maybe it takes someone who moves easily between London and the “colonies” to observe these subtleties.
Lakshmi Persaud has emerged as one of these chroniclers. Her power of observation has garnered an international following. In the Caribbean she now stands tall among her contemporaries."
The Caribbean Camera
"The book’s deepest concern is harmony: learning to live in civility with other individuals and other communities; seeking a balance within oneself between reason and passion, between knowing and feeling; living a life of courtesy and consideration for others; and retaining a capacity for attunement with the cosmos."
Kenneth Ramchand, Professor Emeritus of English,
University of the West Indies
"Daughters of Empire is a novel about women of strength who battle with change and overcome it in their own individual ways. It is hard to do the intricacies and depth of this novel justice in so few words, so all I can do is highly recommend you read this inspiring novel for yourself."
Dundee University Review of the Arts
Review of Daughters of Empire
Jeremy Poynting, founder and managing editor of Peepal Tree Press.
27 Sept, 2012, Nehru Centre, London.
"Persaud could be partially likened to a Caribbean Jane Austen, underscoring the deepest of issues with a light, graceful hand."
Trinidad Guardian
Order Now