Paama, who is a great cook, has returned to her family after 10 years of marriage to the gluttonous Ansige, but two years later he hires the master tracker Kwame to find her. Kwame needs the money to finance his own wanderlust and reluctantly takes the job. These events draw the attention of Chance, the Indigo Lord, one of the powerful spirits called Djombi. The Indigo Lord once wielded the power of Chaos, imbued within the Chaos Stick, but to punish him it was taken from him and given to Paama. Now he wants it back, and he has all sorts of elaborate schemes planned to induce Paama to give him back the Chaos Stick.
The narrator, sometimes serious and often mischievous, spins delicate but powerful descriptions of locations, emotions, and the protagonists' great flaws and great strengths as they interact with family, poets, tricksters, sufferers of tragedy, and – of course – occasional moments of pure chaos.
About the Author
Karen Lord has been a physics teacher, a diplomat, a part-time soldier and an academic at various times and in various countries. She is now a writer and research consultant in Barbados. Her debut novel Redemption in Indigo won the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2011 William L. Crawford Award and the Mythopoeic Award, and is nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award.
Industry Reviews
A clever, exuberant mix of Caribbean and Senegalese influences . . . Lord manages to compress her story while balancing the cosmic and the personal - all with a verve that would be the envy of many veteran novelists * New York Times Book Review *
The perfect antidote to the formula fantasies currently flooding the market * Guardian *
You can almost hear the beat of African drums as the rhythm of the prose reverberates through your mind, and you will almost wish that you were listening to someone reading it aloud, the way folk tales are meant to be told * Book Monkey *
This is one of those literary works of which it can be said that not a word should be changed * Booklist *
Redemption in Indigo . . . combine[s] comedy, a sense of mythic-ness, gravity, and sheer elegance * Charles Tan *
The characters are beautifully drawn . . . the adventure points beyond itself to insights about human experience in general * Fantasy Faction *
The impish love child of Tutuola and Marquez. Utterly delightful * Nalo Hopkinson *
The whole thing is enormous fun, thanks not least to a chatty, companionable narrator . . . Ace. * SFX *
This retelling of a Senegalese folk tale packs a great deal of subtly alluring storytelling into this small package * Publishers Weekly *
Redemption in Indigo is a fairy tale for the new generation, filled with spirits, magic and touches of African and Caribbean folklore * The Voice *
Sprightly from start to finish, with vivid descriptions, memorable heroes and villains, brisk pacing - clever storytelling * Caribbean Review of Books *
Charmingly told * Sunday Telegraph *
Karen Lord is doing something different and that's to be applauded * Independent on Sunday *
Karen Lord is one of the hot writers of the day in SF . . . Redemption in Indigo marries Caribbean and Senegalese traditions into a fable not dissimilar in tone to Jose Saramago's Cain, which likewise deploys humour and parable-like set pieces to peel back layers of myth. It's a beautiful work of fiction * staffersbookreview.com *
