Off-White by Astrid Roemer (Translated by Lucy Scott and David McKay)
Author(s) from: Born in Suriname and has lived there for significant portions of her life. Also lived in the Netherlands.
Setting: Suriname, 1966
Original Language: Dutch
First Publised: 2019
Description: It’s 1966 in Suriname, on the Caribbean coast of South America, and the long shadow of colonialism still hangs over the country. Grandma Bee is the proud, cigar-smoking matriarch of the Vanta family, which is an intricate mix of Creole, Maroon, French, Indian, Indigenous, British, and Jewish backgrounds. But Grandma Bee is dying, a cough has settled deep in her lungs. The approaching end has her thinking about the members of her family she’s lost, and especially one of her favorite granddaughters, Heli, who has been sent away to the Netherlands because of an affair with her white teacher. Ultimately, there’s only one question Bee must What is a family? If her descendants are spread across the world, don’t look similar, don’t share a heritage, and don’t even know each other, what bond will they have once she has died? A moving portrait of a woman finding peace in the legacy that is her daughters and granddaughters, Off-White , keenly translated by Lucy Scott and David McKay, is also a searing and complex portrait of male violence, the legacy of colonialism, and a dismantling of what it means to be “white”. Written after a nearly 20-year break from publishing, Off-White is another masterpiece from the only Surinamese author to win the prestigious Dutch Literature Award.
Other Books by the Author(s): On a Woman's Madness (1982)

The Cost of Sugar by Cynthia McLeod (Translated by Gerald Mettam)
Author(s) from: Born in Suriname and has lived there for significant portions of her life. Also lived in the Netherlands.
Setting: Suriname, 1765-1779
Original Language: Dutch
First Publised: 1987
Description: The Cost of Sugar is an intriguing history of those rabid times in Dutch Surinam between 1765-1779 when sugar was king. Told through the eyes of two Jewish step sisters, Eliza and Sarith, descendants of the settlers of 'New Jerusalem of the River' know today as Jodensvanne. Their pampered existences become intertwined with the fate of the plantations as the slaves decide to fight against the violent repression they have endured for too long. The Cost of Sugar is a frank expose of the tragic toll on the lives of colonists and slaves alike.

We Slaves of Suriname by Anton de Kom (Translated by David McKay)
Author(s) from: Born in Suriname and was a Surinamese resistance fighter and anti-colonialist author. After his arrest he was exiled to the Netherlands.
Setting: Suriname
Original Language: Dutch
First Publised: 1934
Description: We Slaves of Suriname is a nonfiction book that tells the history of the formation of the former Dutch colony of Suriname in South America from the perspective of Anton De Kom, the son of a slave who became a tireless resistance fighter and a member of the Communist Party after the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940. A key account of decolonialist history, We Slaves of Suriname integrates the experience of Suriname’s oppressed, multiethnic people into the greater history of South America and adds to the narrative of struggles against slavery, imperialism, and racism. In his scathingly defiant account, De Kom translates his personal anger at the brutal legacy of the Dutch into a beautiful, passionate history and call-to-arms. The book now finally sees its English translation at a time when the people of Suriname are still struggling against the vestiges of colonialism.