Austin Clarke on honing his craft: an island epic is a capstone on a distinguished literary career.

An island is a place that suggests by its definition that you have to leave; the boundaries are too restricting," asserts Austin Clarke.

Leaving his native Barbados for Canada in 1955, the author intended to obtain a degree in political science and economics, go on to England to study law and return to Barbados to become a politician--a typical plan for young Caribbean intellectuals of the era.

Almost 50 years later, Clarke, now 69, a Canadian citizen and renowned writer, speaks to large crowds in major cities in the world, not about political causes but about his iconoclastic, award-winning new novel, The Polished Hoe (Amistad Press, June 2003, $24.95, ISBN 0-060-55565-3). It seems, however, the role has long chosen him. Clarke has been a newspaper journalist and broadcaster covering social issues and assisted in setting up black studies programs at Yale University, where he was a visiting professor. He served as cultural attache of the Barbados Embassy in Washington and was adviser to the Prime Minister of Barbados from 1973 to 1976.

It is no surprise, then, that Clarke refers to himself as a writer interested in social realism, and The Polished Hoe is as real as it gets. At 462 pages, it is a searing narrative of epic proportions set on a fictitious Caribbean island called Bimshire (a nickname for Barbados) in the 1950s. In a 24-hour time span, the novel's main character, Mary Mathilda, giving a statement to the authorities about a crime she has committed, unwittingly dissects the evils of slavery and its legacy of colonialism. Mary-Mathilda, a descendant of slaves, a mulatto child who becomes the kept woman of the manager of the sugar plantation that dominates the villagers' lives and the mother of his only male heir, is the synthesis of the harsh injustices heaped upon her race. Ultimately, she exacts revenge for the atrocities she has endured. Clarke's superb handling of this reality sets him apart as one of our most gifted writers.

Already, The Polished Hoe has won major literary awards in Canada: the Giller Prize and the Trillium Prize, as well as the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the best overall book. It also got a push from First Lady Laura Bush, who told a national audience on the Good Morning America program in late September that she was reading and enjoying the book. She was on to kick off the show's literacy campaign for children.

Clarke also has six short-story collections, 10 novels (including the 1997 prize-winning The Origin of Waves) and two memoirs to his credit. Reflecting on his career he says, "There was nothing outstanding in Barbados that pointed me towards being a writer." He adds, however, having friends with whom he competed in reading "races," listening to his mother and her friends tell stories, and indulging in the four daily newspapers and the radio reports at his disposal were incentives. Further, he maintains, anybody from the West Indies could be a writer if they were so inclined, given that "you are prepared by the evidence [from your sociopolitical, socioeconomic realities] for a time when you have got to give that evidence as a narrative."

Clarke's first writing job in Canada was as a reporter for the Timmins Daily News. There he realized he was good at doing feature stories. Writing them on deadline "was the most important contribution to my becoming a writer, because it gave me the discipline," he says. In 1963, he became a full-time writer. His first book, Survivors of the Crossing, was published in 1964.

Clarke says he is most inspired by visual elements. "I like to have words draw pictures." The Polished Hoe, then, is a multipaneled illustration based on the image of a woman he saw in a cane field on a visit to Barbados in 1994. Whenever he is moved to write a story, the idea lives with him for weeks and months. At 3:00 a.m. on a given morning, he becomes very restless and starts rearranging his furniture. "Then" Clarke says, "I know that in five minutes I'm going to write the first sentence in that new novel or short story."

The Polished Hoe opens with Mary-Mathilda introducing herself: "My name is Mary. People in this Village call me Mary-Mathilda. Or, Tilda, for short. To my mother I was Mary-girl. My names I am christen with are Mary Gertrude Mathilda, but I don't use Gertrude, because my maid has the same name. My surname that people 'bout-here uses, is either Paul, or Bellfeels, depending who you speak to...."

In a novel built on ironies, the use of the dialect is at once one of the most compelling aspects of the story and one of the key elements in its twists and turns. "I wanted Mary-Mathilda to tell the story, and certainly not in Standard English, but in her own language, which is a reflection of her soul and her culture." So it is this "simple" Mary-Mathilda who has become, by her forced exposure to the upper classes of her society, a polished whore--who, in telling the pure history of her act leaves "a legacy of words behind [her] so that people will know" and be enlightened by her revelations. In Clarke's hands, Mary-Mathilda becomes a revolutionary. When asked whether he plans to actively pursue his earlier interest in social and political issues, the outspoken writer, who is currently revising a novel and thinking of a memoir and another novel, responds, "No. My writing will have to be the vehicle."

Jamaican-born Denolyn Carroll is assistant managing editor at Essence magazine.