- Source: Summer Lightning (short story collection)
Summer Lightning and other stories is a 1986 collection of short stories by Jamaican writer Olive Senior. It won the 1987 Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was selected for the 2022 Big Jubilee Read, a list of 70 titles by Commonwealth writers.
In A History of Literature in the Caribbean: English- and Dutch-speaking countries the stories are described as "scintillating evocations of life in rural Jamaica". Booker Prize winner Marlon James included it in his "My 10 Favorite Books" in a 2016 New York Times piece, saying "The entire future of Caribbean prose is mapped out in this collection of stories, and I don't know a single Caribbean writer who doesn't reread it often".
Senior has said of this book: "I believe Summer Lightning to be a true expression of everyday life in that part of the world I describe, i.e., deep rural Jamaica, in terms of behaviours, beliefs, practices narrated and language used."
Story titles
The stories in the book are:
Summer lightning
Love orange
Country of the one eye god
Ascot
Bright Thursdays
Real old time t'ing
Do angels wear brassieres?
Confirmation day
The boy who loved ice cream
Ballad