Illustrious Exile: Journal of My Sojourn in the West Indies by Robert Burns Esq

In 1786, the Scottish poet Robert Burns, penniless and needing to escape the consequences of his complicated love life, accepted the position of book-keeper on an estate in Jamaica. The success of his Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect made this escape unnecessary. Thus far is historical fact. In Andrew Lindsay’s novel, Burns indeed goes to Jamaica and then to the Dutch colony of Demerara where, into the world of sugar and slavery, he brought his propensity for falling in love, his humanity and his urge to write poetry. In 1997, a small mahogany chest is found in a Wai Wai Amerindian village in Guyana. It contains Burns’ journal from 1786 to 1796, when he died. Andrew Lindsay’s novel is a work of imaginative invention, poetic description and meticulous historical reconstruction. As a fellow Scot who has settled in Guyana, Lindsay brings an incomer’s fresh eye to the Caribbean landscape and imaginative insights into how Burns, as a man of his times, might have responded to slavery. Not least, “Illustrious Exile” contains some brilliant versions of Burns’ poems, as written in the Caribbean.