Jan Carew (Jan Rynveld Carew) Biography

Guyanese novelist and poet, born in Agricola, British Guiana (now Guyana), educated at universities in America, Czechoslovakia, and France. He has lived and taught in Ghana, Jamaica, Canada, and more recently in Chicago, and was made Professor of African-American Studies at Northwestern University. His early novels, Black Midas (1958; US title A Touch of Midas, 1958) and The Wild Coast (1958), are notable for their vivid, resonant descriptions of the Guyanese landscape. Other novels include The Last Barbarian (1960), set in Harlem, and Moscow Is Not My Mecca (1964; published as A Green Winter, 1965), set in Soviet Russia. Poetry collections include Streets of Eternity (1952) and Sea Drums in My Blood (1980). Sons of the Flying Wing (1970), Children of the Sun (1976), and Computer Killer (1985) are among his many children's books. He has also published a collection of essays, Fulcrums of Change (1987); the historical studies Grenada: The Hour Will Strike Again (1985) and Rape of Paradise: Columbus and the Origins of Western Racism (1994); and a biographical study of Malcolm X, Ghosts in Our Blood: With Malcolm X in Africa, England and the Caribbean (1994).