Winner of the National Book Award for First Fiction: âBeguiling stories . . . about an uncommonly fascinating part of the hemisphereâ (Time).  Easy in the Islands is a âstunningâ collection of stories by one of contemporary Americaâs foremost journalists and fiction writers. Infused with the rhythms of the Caribbean, these vivid tales of paradise sought and paradise lost are as lush, steamy, and invigorating as the islands themselves (The Washington Post).  A calypso singer named Lord Short Shoe consorts with a vampish black singer to bilk an American out of his only companionâa monkey. An island bureaucracy confounds the attempts of a hotel owner to get his dead mother out of the freezer and into a real graveâuntil he resorts to a highly unusual form of burial. Two poor islanders stumble into a high-class dance party and find themselves caught in a violent encounter that just might escalate into revolution. And a young woman sails off into the romantic tropics with the man of her dreams, only to learn the hard wayâas Eve didâthat paradise is just another place to leave behind.  From fishing fleets in remote atolls too small to appear on any map to the sprawling barrios and yacht filled marinas of Miami, Bob Shacochis charts a course across a Caribbean that no tourist will recognize.
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