Chutney Power

There is no other writer in the Caribbean quite like Willi Chen. He is that rare breed, a West Indian writer of Chinese origin, yet the Chinese in his fiction and plays tend to be secondary characters. Most of his stories, whether comical or darker in tone, focus on the simple, earthy lives of the poverty-line rural East Indian community - the quarrels and contrivances, the passions and ambitions, the easy joys and elemental tragedies. Chen writes with an astonishing vigour and enthusiasm, his words tumbling over themselves in their lavishly sensuous and inventive application to his canvas, vividly conjuring the smells, textures, sounds and flavours of the Trinidad countryside.