Andrew Salkey was born 30th January 1928 in Panama, to Afro-Jamaican parents with Haitian and Barbadian heritage. After the birth of his brother, Salkey’s mother returned to Jamaica in 1930, whilst his father stayed behind on the Latin American mainland, living on as a distant presence in the lives of his two sons. Raised by his formidable, schoolmistress mother and his grandmother, Salkey had a middle-class upbringing, attending St. George’s College and Munro College in Jamaica. On finishing his studies, he worked briefly as a civil servant on the island, a time he credits as providing source material for his later novel
The Late Emancipation of Jerry Stover(1968) which follows the lives of a group of disillusioned and hard-drinking young Kingston residents.
Traveling to England in
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Citation: Houlden, Kate. "Andrew Salkey". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 June 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3916, accessed 26 December 2024.]
