Roy Heath
Roy A(ubrey) K(elvin) Heath (13 August 1926 - 14 May 2008) was a Guyanese writer, most noted for his "Georgetown Trilogy" of novels (also published in an omnibus volume as The Armstrong Trilogy, 1994), consisting of From the Heat of the Day (1979), One Generation (1980), and Genetha (1981). Heath said that his work was "intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana".
Educated at Central High School, Georgetown, he worked as a Treasury clerk (1944-51) before leaving Guyana for England in 1951. He attended the University of London (1952-6), earning a B.A. Honours degree in Modern Languages. He also studied law and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1964 (and the Guyana bar in 1973), although he never practised as a lawyer, pursuing a career since 1959 as a writer and a schoolteacher in London, where he lived until his death at the age of 81.
In 1974 his first novel, A Man Come Home, was published. This was followed four years later by The Murderer (1978), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize that same year and was described by the Observer as "mysteriously authentic, and unique as a work of art".
His other published novels are Kwaku; or, The Man Who Could Not Keep His Mouth Shut (1982), Orealla (1984), The Shadow Bride (1988) and The Ministry of Hope (1997).
Heath also wrote non-fiction, including Shadows Round the Moon: Caribbean Memoirs (1990), plays - his Inez Combray was produced in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1972, in which year he won the Guyana Theatre Guild Award - and short stories. In 1983 he delivered the Edgar Mittelholzer Memorial Lecture, entitled “Art and Experience”, in Georgetown. He was awarded the Guyana Literature Prize in 1989.
[edit] Bibliography
Novels
- A Man Come Home (London: Longman, 1974).
- The Murderer (London: Allison & Busby, 1978; Guardian Fiction Prize).
- From the Heat of the Day (London: Allison & Busby, 1979).
- One Generation (London: Allison & Busby, 1980).
- Genetha (London: Allison & Busby, 1981).
- Kwaku; or, the Man Who Could Not Keep His Mouth Shut (London: Allison & Busby, 1982).
- Orealla (London: Allison & Busby, 1984).
- The Shadow Bride (London: Collins, 1988).
- The Armstrong trilogy (New York: Persea, 1994).
- The Ministry of Hope (London: Marion Boyars, 1997).
Memoir
- Shadows Round the Moon: Caribbean Memoirs (London: Collins, 1990).
Short stories
- "Miss Mabel's Burial," in Kaie (Georgetown, Guyana), 1972.
- "The Wind and the Sun," in Savacou (Kingston, Jamaica), 1974.
- "The Writer of Anonymous Letters," in Firebird 2, edited by T. J. Binding (London: Penguin Books, 1983).
- "Sisters," in London Magazine, September 1988.
- "The Master Tailor and the Lady's Skirt", in Colours of a New Day: New Writing for South Africa, edited by Sarah Lefanu and Stephen Hayward (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990)
- "According to Marx," in So Very English, edited by Marsha Rowe (London: Serpent's Tail, 1991).
