The Lagahoo's Apprentice

John Walker is a professor of Spanish at Queen’s University.

Rabindranath Maharaj adds to his reputation as a significant
Canadian-Caribbean writer with this powerful novel.

In The Lagahoo’s Apprentice, journalist Stephen Sagar is enticed from
Canada to Trinidad to write the biography of a politician-landowner.
This event provides the author with the opportunity to relate not only
the boss’s past life, but also the writer’s. The narrative is
interspersed with memories and reminiscences of his youth, growing up on
the island, his 16 years in Canada (trapped in a loveless marriage to a
bitter and cynical wife), and his feelings for his beloved
seven-year-old daughter. Maharaj cleverly interweaves the past lives of
the two men with the present-day narrative. In elegant prose, he
captures the rhythms, sounds, colors, and smells—the very essence—of
his native land. He also provides shrewd analysis of the ingrained
colonial mentality (rooted in the past British rule) and the
exploitation of the people, as the backdrop for the politics and
corruption of the present (oil, drugs).

Maharaj conveys all of this within and by means of Trinidadian
folklore, especially the lagahoo figure of the title, a shape-shifting
creature that transforms itself into an animal at night and by day a
solitary, prowling human with chains round his ankles. In the end, the
protagonist finds himself caught between two cultures. Confronted with
the island’s corruption and hypocrisy, he longs for the remembered
beauty of the land and his idyllic childhood. Maharaj’s sharp eye and
keen ear for the customs of the “old country” help to capture the
immigrant experience with all its virtues and defects. The Lagahoo’s
Apprentice is a resounding success.