Into the eponymous village Augustown, the place where freed slaves fled on emancipation morning in 1838, Miller casts compelling archetypes, in a narrative spanning from 1920 to 1982. An admired poet, Miller, like his compatriot the Man Booker prize-winning Marlon James, has mined a rich seam of Jamaican history.
The story of Bedward at the centre of Augustown, a partially fictionalised version of August Town, is given a much more richly nuanced and empathetic telling in Kei Miller’s vivid modern fable.
The headline in the national paper, the Gleaner, mocked: “Bedward Stick to the Earth”. At the appointed hour they leapt but instead of soaring towards the firmament they came crashing down. The followers were told to climb nearby trees and to wait for the signal to jump. Possessions were no longer needed because on that day Bedward had prophesied they’d “fly away home” and ascend to heaven. O n 31 December 1920 thousands of Jamaicans who, on the instructions of the messianic preacher Alexander Bedward, had given away all of their worldly goods, assembled at August Town.
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