The Ventriloquist's Tale

Pauline Melville FRSL (born 1940) is an English writer of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry, born in British Guiana (now Guyana), known for her short stories, novels, and essays exploring post-colonial themes and magical realism, with notable works including the short story collection Shape-Shifter (1990) and the novel The Ventriloquist's Tale (1997). She has received major awards such as the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Guardian Fiction Prize, and Whitbread First Novel Award, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.