Marshall’s journey is a long, taking him first to wartime Liverpool and then, London where he marries and mixes with a clubland crowd of gamblers, musicians and politicians. In Africa, he finds a continent in the turbulent throes of attempting to escape a colonial past. Returning to Paradise, Marshall’s life turns full circle in his epic mission to defeat the duppy, or ghost that started him on his voyage.

In Duppy Conqueror, first published in 1998, Ferdinand Dennis has created a powerful narrative of the Afro-Caribbean experience in which the personal and the political seamlessly collide.