The first novel of author Frank Hercules (1911-1996), Where the Hummingbird Fies was set in Trinidad, and brutally satirized the island’s racial caste system and the entire social hierarchy the British had put in place. A Guardian review noted that Hercules “animates an absurd milieu where skin color, hair texture, ethnic features, business acumen, respectability, and sometimes intelligence have to be carefully weighed before an individual can be given a social acceptability rating.” Where the Hummingbird Flies was named one of the five best first novels of the year by Newsweek magazine.
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Frank Hercules (1911-1996), Trinidadian-American author. He was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He went to London to study law at the Inns of Court. In the early 1940's, he left for the United States, where his father, an anticolonial revolutionary, had found asylum after being forced out of Trinidad.
Mr. Hercules settled in Harlem, where he started a clothing manufacturing business, without success, and worked in the insurance industry. He also became involved in the nascent black nationalist movement. After falling under the spell of Lewis Michaux, the bookstore owner and orator, he resolved to write.
His first novel, "Where the Hummingbird Flies" (1961), dealt with colonial oppression in Trinidad. "I Want a Black Doll" (1967), his next novel, took interracial marriage as its subject. His third, "On Leaving Paradise" (1980), was a picaresque tale of a young man who leaves Trinidad for England. He also wrote a work of history, "American Society and the Black Revolution" (1972).
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[1st ed.]
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