Brother Man

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Brother Man
Author Roger Mais
Country Jamaica
Language English
Genre(s) Novel
Publisher Jonathan Cape
Publication date 1954
Media type Print (Paperback)
Pages 191 pp
ISBN NA

Brother Man (1954) is 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 claustrophobic ghetto of ' The Lane' .