McKenzie describes this work as 'the result of one philosopher's response to ten West Indian novels' (ix). As a philosopher and an academic, the author is concerned to develop and promote Caribbean philosophy and it is therefore fitting that much of the introduction is taken up with a defence of his approach. His book is not, he asserts, a way of understanding philosophy through the study of literature nor is it a 'philosophy of literature' since, as he rightly claims, this is 'close to what is now called literary theory' (2). It is an attempt to identify the philosophical problems that are dramatized through this selection of fictional works.