Praise for Ever Since We Small

What other Caribbean writers are saying about Celeste Mohammed's new novel-in-stories.

 Cherie Jones

Author of How The One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

"Mohammed weaves a compelling saga in lyrical and luminous prose, replete with the colour and cadence of the Caribbean. I couldn’t put it down."

Kevin Jared Hosein

2025 Winner of Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

"Mohammed masterfully weaves together myth, history, and memory to illuminate the inner lives of Caribbean women whose spirits are tested but never broken by hardship."

Ira Mathur

2023 Non-Fiction Winner OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature

"This novel meditates on belonging, trauma, and the quiet acts of defiance that shape women's lives across time and place."

About the book

Celeste Mohammed’s second novel-in-stories, Ever Since We Small, is a family saga which covers a sweeping landscape from the days of the British Raj in India, to multicultural modern Trinidad. 

Written in a blend of Standard English and several flavours of Trinidad kriol, the book follows the bloodline of a young woman, Jayanti, after her decision to become a girmitiya, an indentured labourer in the Caribbean. 

Jayanti’s grandson, Lall Gopaul, seeks to escape the rural village where he was born, but becomes seduced and corrupted by urban life. His son, Shiva, is forced to take a child-bride, Salma, but never recovers from the guilt. 

Heartache follows for their three children - Anand, Nadya and Abby - who must each find a way to accept and yet move past their parents' failed example. 

Along the journey of these ten interconnected stories, the alchemy necessary to turn the Gopauls’ inheritance of pain into a “generation of gold” requires intervention by the living and dead, the “real” and the mythical, the mundane and the magical, the secular and the sacred.

 More Praise for Ever Since We Small

What international writers are saying about Celeste Mohammed's new novel-in-stories.

 Eleanor Shearer

Author of River Sing Me Home

"A beautiful mixture of folklore, history, the intimate pattern of family relationships, and a meditation of what it means for women, over generations, to love, endure, and grow.”

Priya Hein

Author of Riambel

"As a descendent of indentured labourers, Mohammed’s heart wrenching stories transported me back to my own roots as the characters leapt from the pages."

Isabelle Dupuy

Author of Living The Dream

"Mohammed writes in a rich and vivid language where myth and gods cross the oceans all the way to Trinidad where they acquire a Caribbean sensitivity."

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