Rude Boy

Chris Salewicz visited Jamaica in 1978. It was a life-changing experience, and the first of many such visits. In this book he has written about the history, culture, music and magic of Jamaica from his own personal experience of this island of paradoxes.

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Chris Salewicz first visited Jamaica in 1978. It was a life-changing experience, and over the next twenty years he was to return many times. The Island of Springs' has a population of only 3 million but an impact on the world that far outweighs its size: from Bob Marley and reggae; through Obeah, voodoo and Rastafarianism; to, of course, ganja. Then there is piracy and slavery; political civil war; death squads or badmen', and Yardie' organised crime. In 1995 the house Chris was staying in was attacked by machete-wielding badmen', a terrifying sequence of events that gives the book its structure. Part travelogue, part history, part memoir, Rude Boy gives us the complete Jamaican experience: the fear, the violence, the drugs, but also the beauty.