Celeste Mohammed’s forthcoming book Ever Since We Small (Jacaranda Books, October 2025) will be launched at the 2025 Bocas Lit Fest, along with Olive Senior’s new novel, Paradise Once. On May 4, from 4:30 to 5:30pm, the authors will join host Lisa Outar for a conversation about illuminating the shadowy parts of Caribbean history. This launch will take place at the Old Fire Station (NALIS, Hart and Abercromby St., Port of Spain, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago).
Ever Since We Small is described as “an intricately woven tapestry of stories where survival, resilience and self-discovery are passed down through generations of an Indo-Trinidadian family.”
Description: 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.
Celeste Mohammed is a Trinidadian lawyer-turned-writer. Her debut novel-in-stories Pleasantview (Jacaranda, 2021) won the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the UK Society of Authors McKitterick Prize, and her debut non-fiction book A Different Energy: Women in Caribbean Oil was published in 2023. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts and she received a 2018 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.
For more information, see https://www.bocaslitfest.com/events/book-launch-celeste-mohammed-and-olive-senior/ and https://www.bocaslitfest.com/participant/celeste-mohammed/
Also see https://jacarandabooks.co.uk/products/ever-since-we-small?_pos=1&_sid=4be44da4e&_ss=r
Celeste Mohammed’s forthcoming book Ever Since We Small (Jacaranda Books, October 2025) will be launched at the 2025 Bocas Lit Fest, along with Olive Senior’s new novel, Paradise Once. On May 4, from 4:30 to 5:30pm, the authors will join host Lisa Outar for a conversation about illuminating the shadowy parts of Caribbean history. This launch
