In the Castle of My Skin

In the Castle of My Skin is the first and much acclaimed novel by Barbadian writer George Lamming, originally published in 1953 by Michael Joseph in London, and subsequently published in New York City by McGraw-Hill. The novel won a Somerset Maugham Award and was championed by eminent figures Jean-Paul Sartre and Richard Wright, the latter writing an introduction to the book’s US edition. An autobiographical coming-of-age novel, set in the 1930s–’40s in Carrington Village, Barbados, where the author was born and raised, In the Castle of My Skin follows the events in the life of a young boy named G, taking place against the background of dramatic changes in the society in which 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.”