--- product_id: 11029893 title: "A High Wind in Jamaica" price: "€ 28.11" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 8 url: https://www.desertcart.pt/products/11029893-a-high-wind-in-jamaica store_origin: PT region: Portugal --- # A High Wind in Jamaica **Price:** € 28.11 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** A High Wind in Jamaica - **How much does it cost?** € 28.11 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.pt](https://www.desertcart.pt/products/11029893-a-high-wind-in-jamaica) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description desertcart.com: A High Wind in Jamaica: 9780940322158: Hughes, Richard, Prose, Francine: Books Review: Nobody told me how violent (and pertinent to the plot) and pervasive (but subtle) the sex is in this terrific book - "A High Wind in Jamaica" is always on the "best novels" lists and when I finally got around to it, I've discovered that the adulation is deserved. It's one of the best things I've read for a long time. "A High Wind..." is sometimes compared to "Lord of the Flies," but they can teach "Lord of the Flies" in high school because the symbolism is pretty clear and the little-nerdy-guys vs big-peer-pressure-bullies characters are easy to point out and discuss. And there's no sex in "Lord of the Flies." (How could there be? It's all boys?!?) The plot of "A High Wind..." is high adventure: After a hurricane destroys the house of the British colonialists exploiting the poor in Jamaica, the Bas-Thorntons send their five slightly wild children (oldest brother John, followed by Emily, Edward, Rachel, and baby Laura) - along with the Fernandez's slightly older and more reserved children (Margaret and Henry) - back to Britain. But on the way back, they're kidnapped by pirates and undergo a number of extraordinary physical and psychological adventures before they're returned to the motherland. The violence in "A High Wind..." is pervasive and clearly important to the plot. Like the violence, the sex is scattered throughout the story, but appears ambiguous. But if you think about it, the sexual allusions result in inappropriate sex; some dirty filthy, socially unacceptable sex WITH PIRATES; a little sexual confusion among the children; and even a some gender play WITH PIRATES, all of which could be tough to talk about with tenth graders. The first half of the novel has plenty of funny, dry British incidents. The diction itself is often intentionally humorous. The pirates turn out not to be what you might expect, which is both funny and appalling at times. And the conclusion is completely ambiguous, ending in a very thought-provoking scene. This is a terrific novel that shouldn't be wasted on the young who wouldn't understand all the implications. Review: High-seas adventure with big surprises and troubling undertones - High-seas piracy and the complex psychological lives of children are brought together, quite strikingly, in Richard Hughes’s 1929 novel "A High Wind in Jamaica." This book looks ahead to William Golding’s "Lord of the Flies" in the way it suggests that the outward innocence of children may conceal a capacity for cruel and wicked acts; but Hughes’s presentation of these ideas seems to work at a subtler and more disturbing level than does Golding’s better-known 1954 novel. "A High Wind in Jamaica" begins in, unsurprisingly, Jamaica, at a time when that singularly lovely island is still an English colony. I took this book along with me on a trip to Jamaica, and I found that the descriptive passages from the early part of the book capture well the paradoxical beauty of the island: “The air was full of the usual tropic din: mosquitoes humming, cicalas trilling, bull-frogs twanging like guitars. That din goes on all night and all day almost: is more insistent, more memorable than the heat itself, even, or the number of things that bite” (p. 18). The evocation of natural beauty, closing on a note of menace: it is strongly characteristic of the manner in which Hughes conveys setting and tells his story. The “high wind” of the novel’s title is a hurricane that strikes Jamaica and destroys the home of the Bas-Thorntons, an English family who, like many other Britons of that time, have come to Jamaica to recoup fortunes lost in the mother country. Struck by how narrowly the family survived the tempest that destroyed the family home, and concerned that their proper English children seem to be taking on “wild” island ways, Mr. and Mrs. Thornton decide that it is a propitious time to send their children to live in England, along with the children of a nearby Creole family. Yet Hughes’s narrator places considerable emphasis on the idea that the Thorntons – and, by implication, most parents – know almost nothing about the actual emotional lives of their children, in passages like this one: “It would have surprised Mrs. Thornton very much to have been told that hitherto she had meant practically nothing to her children….[I]t would undoubtedly have surprised the children also to be told how little their parents meant to them. Children seldom have any power of quantitative self-analysis: whatever the facts, they believe as an article of faith that they love Father and Mother first and equally. Actually, the Thornton children had loved Tabby [the family cat] first and foremost in all the world, some of each other second, and hardly noticed their mother’s existence more than once a week. Their father they loved a little more: partly owing to the ceremony of riding home on his stirrups.” (pp. 44-45) But the Clorinda, the ship in which the Thorntons have booked passage “home” to England for their children, is waylaid by pirates; and once the children have been taken onto the pirate ship, Hughes gets on to his real subject: the question of what children – especially the two oldest Thornton children, John and Emily – are capable of, once the restraints of ordinary civilization have been stripped away. The children-and-pirates scenario may seem like something reminiscent of J.M. Barrie’s "Peter Pan" (1904); but if anything, "A High Wind in Jamaica" works as a sort of anti-"Peter Pan." For one thing, the pirates, as led by a Danish captain named Jonsen and his Viennese first mate Otto, are not figures of operatic menace, like Captain Hook from Peter Pan or Long John Silver from Robert Louis Stevenson’s "Treasure Island" (1883); rather, they emerge as feckless and rather pathetic figures. Taking advantage of the indulgent attitudes of Spanish colonial authorities in the port of Santa Lucia, Cuba, they are operating a good 150 years after the supposed “golden age” of piracy: “Piracy had long ceased to pay, and should have been scrapped years ago; but a vocational tradition will last on a long time after it has ceased to be economic, in a decadent form. Now, Santa Lucia – and piracy – continued to exist as they always had: but for no other reason” (p. 96). And as their nautical misadventures unfold, Jonsen and Otto and the rest of the pirates show a remarkable capacity for poor and ill-informed decision-making. The more fateful, and more existentially troubling, words and actions and decisions come from the children. "A High Wind in Jamaica" offers a couple of real surprises. When, for example, one major character leaves the novel, the circumstances of said event are described so routinely – in a single, declarative, 24-word sentence, about one-third of the way through the book – that the reader is likely to flip through the next couple of pages in search of a passage saying “It was only a dream” or “It was not as serious as had been expected”; but no such passage is to be found. Comparably surprising is an action that Emily carries out after Captain Jonsen’s pirate ship has captured a Dutch merchantman. Hughes is one of those early-20th-century British modernists whose literary consciousness seems to have been molded in large part by the devastation of the First World War. His narrator sets forth the events of "A High Wind in Jamaica" with a knowing, rueful outlook on human flaws and failings, occasionally moving from the novel’s characteristic third-person omniscient point of view to passages of first-person narration in which the narrator stresses what he does not know – as when the narrator says of Mrs. Thornton that “She was a dumpy little woman – Cornish, I believe” (p. 44). This work reminded me of the novels of Robert Graves and Malcolm Lowry, fellow Britons who lived and wrote during the same period; and if you like books like Graves’s World War I memoir "Good-Bye to All That" (1929) or Lowry’s novel "Under the Volcano" (1947), then "A High Wind in Jamaica" will probably appeal to you as well. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #952,044 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #816 in Sea Adventures Fiction (Books) #1,713 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books) #7,000 in Literary Fiction (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.0 out of 5 stars 856 Reviews | ## Images ![A High Wind in Jamaica - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81It0Fw3L+L.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Nobody told me how violent (and pertinent to the plot) and pervasive (but subtle) the sex is in this terrific book *by H***S on July 24, 2014* "A High Wind in Jamaica" is always on the "best novels" lists and when I finally got around to it, I've discovered that the adulation is deserved. It's one of the best things I've read for a long time. "A High Wind..." is sometimes compared to "Lord of the Flies," but they can teach "Lord of the Flies" in high school because the symbolism is pretty clear and the little-nerdy-guys vs big-peer-pressure-bullies characters are easy to point out and discuss. And there's no sex in "Lord of the Flies." (How could there be? It's all boys?!?) The plot of "A High Wind..." is high adventure: After a hurricane destroys the house of the British colonialists exploiting the poor in Jamaica, the Bas-Thorntons send their five slightly wild children (oldest brother John, followed by Emily, Edward, Rachel, and baby Laura) - along with the Fernandez's slightly older and more reserved children (Margaret and Henry) - back to Britain. But on the way back, they're kidnapped by pirates and undergo a number of extraordinary physical and psychological adventures before they're returned to the motherland. The violence in "A High Wind..." is pervasive and clearly important to the plot. Like the violence, the sex is scattered throughout the story, but appears ambiguous. But if you think about it, the sexual allusions result in inappropriate sex; some dirty filthy, socially unacceptable sex WITH PIRATES; a little sexual confusion among the children; and even a some gender play WITH PIRATES, all of which could be tough to talk about with tenth graders. The first half of the novel has plenty of funny, dry British incidents. The diction itself is often intentionally humorous. The pirates turn out not to be what you might expect, which is both funny and appalling at times. And the conclusion is completely ambiguous, ending in a very thought-provoking scene. This is a terrific novel that shouldn't be wasted on the young who wouldn't understand all the implications. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ High-seas adventure with big surprises and troubling undertones *by P***L on June 5, 2017* High-seas piracy and the complex psychological lives of children are brought together, quite strikingly, in Richard Hughes’s 1929 novel "A High Wind in Jamaica." This book looks ahead to William Golding’s "Lord of the Flies" in the way it suggests that the outward innocence of children may conceal a capacity for cruel and wicked acts; but Hughes’s presentation of these ideas seems to work at a subtler and more disturbing level than does Golding’s better-known 1954 novel. "A High Wind in Jamaica" begins in, unsurprisingly, Jamaica, at a time when that singularly lovely island is still an English colony. I took this book along with me on a trip to Jamaica, and I found that the descriptive passages from the early part of the book capture well the paradoxical beauty of the island: “The air was full of the usual tropic din: mosquitoes humming, cicalas trilling, bull-frogs twanging like guitars. That din goes on all night and all day almost: is more insistent, more memorable than the heat itself, even, or the number of things that bite” (p. 18). The evocation of natural beauty, closing on a note of menace: it is strongly characteristic of the manner in which Hughes conveys setting and tells his story. The “high wind” of the novel’s title is a hurricane that strikes Jamaica and destroys the home of the Bas-Thorntons, an English family who, like many other Britons of that time, have come to Jamaica to recoup fortunes lost in the mother country. Struck by how narrowly the family survived the tempest that destroyed the family home, and concerned that their proper English children seem to be taking on “wild” island ways, Mr. and Mrs. Thornton decide that it is a propitious time to send their children to live in England, along with the children of a nearby Creole family. Yet Hughes’s narrator places considerable emphasis on the idea that the Thorntons – and, by implication, most parents – know almost nothing about the actual emotional lives of their children, in passages like this one: “It would have surprised Mrs. Thornton very much to have been told that hitherto she had meant practically nothing to her children….[I]t would undoubtedly have surprised the children also to be told how little their parents meant to them. Children seldom have any power of quantitative self-analysis: whatever the facts, they believe as an article of faith that they love Father and Mother first and equally. Actually, the Thornton children had loved Tabby [the family cat] first and foremost in all the world, some of each other second, and hardly noticed their mother’s existence more than once a week. Their father they loved a little more: partly owing to the ceremony of riding home on his stirrups.” (pp. 44-45) But the Clorinda, the ship in which the Thorntons have booked passage “home” to England for their children, is waylaid by pirates; and once the children have been taken onto the pirate ship, Hughes gets on to his real subject: the question of what children – especially the two oldest Thornton children, John and Emily – are capable of, once the restraints of ordinary civilization have been stripped away. The children-and-pirates scenario may seem like something reminiscent of J.M. Barrie’s "Peter Pan" (1904); but if anything, "A High Wind in Jamaica" works as a sort of anti-"Peter Pan." For one thing, the pirates, as led by a Danish captain named Jonsen and his Viennese first mate Otto, are not figures of operatic menace, like Captain Hook from Peter Pan or Long John Silver from Robert Louis Stevenson’s "Treasure Island" (1883); rather, they emerge as feckless and rather pathetic figures. Taking advantage of the indulgent attitudes of Spanish colonial authorities in the port of Santa Lucia, Cuba, they are operating a good 150 years after the supposed “golden age” of piracy: “Piracy had long ceased to pay, and should have been scrapped years ago; but a vocational tradition will last on a long time after it has ceased to be economic, in a decadent form. Now, Santa Lucia – and piracy – continued to exist as they always had: but for no other reason” (p. 96). And as their nautical misadventures unfold, Jonsen and Otto and the rest of the pirates show a remarkable capacity for poor and ill-informed decision-making. The more fateful, and more existentially troubling, words and actions and decisions come from the children. "A High Wind in Jamaica" offers a couple of real surprises. When, for example, one major character leaves the novel, the circumstances of said event are described so routinely – in a single, declarative, 24-word sentence, about one-third of the way through the book – that the reader is likely to flip through the next couple of pages in search of a passage saying “It was only a dream” or “It was not as serious as had been expected”; but no such passage is to be found. Comparably surprising is an action that Emily carries out after Captain Jonsen’s pirate ship has captured a Dutch merchantman. Hughes is one of those early-20th-century British modernists whose literary consciousness seems to have been molded in large part by the devastation of the First World War. His narrator sets forth the events of "A High Wind in Jamaica" with a knowing, rueful outlook on human flaws and failings, occasionally moving from the novel’s characteristic third-person omniscient point of view to passages of first-person narration in which the narrator stresses what he does not know – as when the narrator says of Mrs. Thornton that “She was a dumpy little woman – Cornish, I believe” (p. 44). This work reminded me of the novels of Robert Graves and Malcolm Lowry, fellow Britons who lived and wrote during the same period; and if you like books like Graves’s World War I memoir "Good-Bye to All That" (1929) or Lowry’s novel "Under the Volcano" (1947), then "A High Wind in Jamaica" will probably appeal to you as well. ### ⭐⭐⭐ Stalls at Sea *by B***L on January 7, 2004* I came to this book with high expectations. It is not only listed amongst the top 100 novels of the 20th c. by the Modern Library, but is also mentioned by Anthony Burgess on his own top 100 novels list. One Amazon reviewer whose literary tastes I admire also heaped praise on it. About all I can say positively for it is that it's an easy read and flows by rather swiftly. My main quibble is with Hughes' overly febrile imagination. It definitely gets the better of him after the children are pirated away off the Cuban coast. Hughes' depiction of Emily's sexual awakening borders on the disquieting. She's only ten years old, after all. The even yonger Rachel has her upturned bottom smilingly explored by the pirate captain while she is sleeping in a scene closer to De Sade than to Golding. Such scenes are passed off as innocent encounters, yet the underlying tension is not so easily dismissed. Freudians would no doubt have a field day with this novel. I enjoy dark satire and psychological exploration in novels. I suppose one can approach the novel from that perspective, but I can only say I've seen it done much more adroitly than Hughes manages here. He depicts the psychology, without any motivation behind it. That is a fatal flaw for a writer. The overly eccentric children's behavior is entirely enigmatic and uncontrolled, which reflects a rather Hobbsian or Calvinist world view. These are definitely not Rousseau's noble savages prancing about the yardarms. They are feral little time bombs, wreaking bloodshed and misery on the adults who intend them no harm. In that sense, they are indeed like Golding's barbaric little band of boys. They have no internal moral compass, no code of behavior, save what is expedient for them. Even that wouldn't be so bad, if the satire were fleshed out with a bit more more humor, a la Swift. Though some readers found humor in the novel, I just couldn't fathom where. At its core, it's one of the most cynical works I've ever read. It's the novelistic equivalent of reading Juvenal or Rochester, sans the great wit that underscored their satirical poems. Suffice it to say that I won't be including it on my personal list of 100 top novels of the 20th c. BEK --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.pt/products/11029893-a-high-wind-in-jamaica](https://www.desertcart.pt/products/11029893-a-high-wind-in-jamaica) --- *Product available on Desertcart Portugal* *Store origin: PT* *Last updated: 2026-04-23*