Esther - if yer have yer head screw on right - No matter where yer go - One night - some time - Yer reach up - yer touch that moon.

For the teeming populace of Old Mack's cacophonous yard in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, it's a cheek by jowl existence lived out on a sweltering public stage. Snatches of calypso compete with hymn tunes, drums and street cries as neighbours drink, brawl, pass judgment, make love, look out for each other and crave a better life. But Ephraim is no dreamer and nothing, not even the seductive Rosa, is going to stop him escaping his dead-end job for a fresh start in England.

Set as returning troops from the Second World War fill the town with their raucous celebrations, Erroll John's Moon on a Rainbow Shawl depicts a vibrant, cosmopolitan world that is as harsh as it is filled with colour and warmth.

'A brawling, laughing, bitter sense of life courses through Moon on a Rainbow Shawl. Errol John fills the stage with people of flesh and blood; he communicates the harshness and tension in this steaming, crowded corner of Port-of-Spain. He writes with such warmth and understanding that the problems and characters of a mean backyard in Trinidad assume a validity for a multitude of teeming, troubled places on this planet.' New York Times

An established and popular three-book history course for lower forms in Caribbean schools.

- Test knowledge and stimulate further enquiry and thought with a wide range of questions and activities.

Alma Norman

M.A. (McGill), H.S. Teaching Dip, (Province of Quebec). One-time History Lecturer, Shortwood Training College for Teachers and Senior History Mistress, Calabar High School, Jamaica.

Series Editor: Edward Brathwaite

B.A. (Cantab), Cert.Ed. (Cantab), D. Phil (Sussex) formerly Professor of Social & Cultural History and Director of the Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of the West Indies, Mona;

Professor of Comparative Literature with special emphasis on the Caribbean and Third World, New York University.