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"
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