In the Castle of My Skin
Cover of the UK first edition | |
| Author | George Lamming |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Denis Williams |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Coming-of-age novel |
| Publisher | Michael Joseph |
Publication date | 1953 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | |
| Followed by | The Emigrants |
In the Castle of My Skin is the debut novel by Barbadian writer George Lamming, originally published in 1953 by Michael Joseph in England, and subsequently published by McGraw-Hill in the United States. The novel won the Somerset Maugham Award and was championed by prominent writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Richard Wright, the latter writing an introduction to the book's U.S. edition.
An autobiographical coming-of-age novel, set in the 1930s and 1940s in Carrington Village, Barbados, where the author was born and raised, In the Castle of My Skin follows the life of a young boy named G, against the backdrop of dramatic changes in the community where he lives. The book's title comes from a couplet in Derek Walcott's early work Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos (1949): "You in the castle of your skin / I the swineherd."
A sequel by Lamming entitled The Emigrants, following the life of the same protagonist as he travels from Barbados to England, was published in 1954.