Crown Jewel: A Novel

De Boissiere's best-known novel, "Crown Jewel", is a story of the economic struggle of Trinidad workers in the 1930s and is regarded as one of the major political novels of the Caribbean. It is set in the 1930s at the time of the Butler riots in the oilfields of south Trinidad - part of the general disturbances in the British Caribbean during the 1930s. Set in his native Trinidad in the 1930s, "Crown Jewel" describes intricate social and racial gradations. At the bottom of the society are the "blacks" - at the top are the colonial elite, the English. After its republication in 1981 translations appeared in Poland, East Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, China, and the Soviet Union. When Crown Jewel was first published in Britain Salman Rushdie praised it