"For Lamming, one terror of the old colonial empire was what he calls 'the terror of the mind', a peculiar toxic form of hegemony which seeks to shape and bend the subject it rules. In the present world the dominant hegemony hopes to bend us to its will and shape our very desires. In such a context, the sovereignty of the imagination becomes one foundation for the imagining and desire for freedom." -- Taken from the introduction by Anthony Bogues About the Author George Lamming is one of the Caribbean's and world s premier novelists, thinkers and men of letters. The author of six novels and of the classic non-fiction essay 'Pleasures of Exile', as well as editor of many volumes, Lamming is currently one of the most important radical public intellectual figures of the English-speaking Caribbean. He has been writer-in-residence at the University of the West Indies and a distinguished visiting professor at many universities in Africa and the United States. He is the recipient of many awards including the Guggenheim and the Sommerest Maugham Awards, and was recently elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Jamaica. He is currently Visiting Professor of Caribbean Literature at Brown University.