Namba Roy Biography

Jamaican novelist, born in Kingston, Jamaica; he spent much of his childhood among the Maroons, the descendants of escaped African slaves, in the mountainous northern area of the island known as ‘the Cockpit Country’. The region's cultural traditions strongly inform Black Albino (1961), his first novel, which is based on an episode of violent disunity among the Maroons during the eighteenth century. Following his discharge from the Merchant Navy in 1944 he lived in London, working in various capacities and producing his highly regarded paintings and sculptures. A further novel entitled No Black Sparrows appeared posthumously in 1989; its narrative of abandoned children who live as pedlars on the streets of Kingston compellingly evokes the society of colonial Jamaica in the 1930s.