Brother Man

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A novel by Roger Mais, about a Messainic folk Rastafarian healer , 'Bra' Man' (in dialect) John Power. The plot follows the superstructure of Christ's story , with other characters resembling Mary Magdelene etc. The book is extremely siginificant as it is the first serious representation of Rastafarianism in literature , and Roger Mais foresaw the defining power of the Rasta movement to Jamaican society 20 years before the era of Bob Marley and Reggae mainstream . It is also significant as an exploration of life in the Jamaican Ghetto, and how the people relate to their leaders , making them deities and throwing them away when they fail to entertain them. The novel is written in prose with a layout that is seemingly cinematic and episodic , little is done to describe the environment beyond the clausterphobic ghetto of ' The Lane' .