Madinah Girl by Anna Levi

Madinah Girl is the first novel by Trinidad-born writer Anna Levi. The book introduces the female character Maria as an acutely intelligent but disturbed mid-teenager who abandons her home because of family indifference and the tyrannical control of an obeah man/Spiritual Baptist father and an acquiescent, defenceless religious mother.

As a streetwise explorer she encounters a series of experiences which expose her to a world of pimps. & prostitutes, random female violation by men, parental dictatorship, drug dealers, revolutionaries, hijackers, crooked policemen, racists and sexual predators & spiritual extortion. Embroiled in an abused, victimised relationship, Maria is continuously running away from her maniacal abuser. This first novel represents a broad canvass of modern Trinidadian life and goes unchallenged as a unique exploration not just of an underworld culture but the teeming materialistic and cynically vicious culture of post-colonial survival in an oil rich spiritually lost society.