Prospero's Daughter

"The very title of Elizabeth Nunez's gripping and richly imagined sixth novel, *Prospero's Daughter,* distances her work from both the original *Tempest* (in which the daughter, Miranda, is perhaps the least developed of all Shakespearean heroines) and from the many postcolonial reactions to the play...Nunez, who is a master at pacing and plotting, explores the motivations behind Caliban's outburst, hatching an entirely new story that is inspired by Shakespeare, but not beholden to him." --***New York Times Book Review***"Masterful...simply wonderful...\[an\] exquisite retelling of *The Tempest."* **--*Kirkus Reviews* (starred review)** "Absorbing...\[Nunez\] writes novels that resound with thunder and fury." \--***Essence*** "A story about the transformative power of love...Readers are sure to enjoy the journey." \--***Black Issues Book Review*** *Prospero's Daughter* is a captivating recreation of Shakespeare's *The Tempest* set on a verdant Caribbean island during the height of tensions between the native population and British colonists. Using Shakespeare's play as a template to address questions of race, class, and power, Nunez turns an intimate eye to an unlikely bond formed between a boy and a girl of disparate backgrounds. When Peter Gardner's ruthless medical genius leads him to experiment on his unwitting patients--often at the expense of their lives--he flees England, seeking an environ where his experiments might continue without scrutiny. He arrives with his three-year-old-daughter, Virginia, in Chacachacare, an isolated island off the coast of Trinidad, in the early 1960s. Gardner considers the locals to be nothing more than savages. He assumes ownership of the home of a servant boy named Carlos, seeing in him a suitable subject upon whom to continue his amoral medical work. Nonetheless, he educates the boy alongside Virginia. As Virginia and Carlos grow and come of age together, they form a covert relationship that violates the outdated mores of colonial rule. When Gardner unveils the pair's relationship and accuses Carlos of a monstrous act, the investigation into the truth is left up to a curt, stonehearted British inspector, whose inquiries bring to light a horrendous secret. At turns epic and intimate, *Prospero's Daughter* is one of the finest novels of the past two decades.