Cliff and Ossie have grown up in Plymouth on the island of Tobago, their lives turning on the axis of small-town life. Then a young couple arrive on the island. Bella, a Caribbean woman, and Peter, an Englishman, come to live on the hill overlooking the sea. And it is here, drawn by the cool ‘flim-style’ house, that the harsh, bright, brittle life of urban Plymouth may be kept briefly at bay until relations become more complicated. Bella, Peter and Cliff embark on an intense, sexual relationship that leads to tension and guilt. . .

‘There is a salt freshness to her writing, an immediacy which makes the reader catch breath for pleasure at the recognition of something exactly observed . . . Kempadoo writes hilarious comic scenes, as well as lyrically sensuous ones’ Independent

‘Tide Running is a stunning book, cutting from the colourful and the comic to the dark and the sensuous with sure-footed grace’ Scotsman