Amazon.com Review
Cereus Blooms at Night, writer and artist Shani Mootoo's first novel, was a finalist for several of Canada's most prestigious literary awards, including the Giller Prize and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Tyler, the narrator of this multigenerational novel, is a gay male nurse at a residential home in Paradise, a town on the amazing fictional island of Lantanacamara. Tyler's favorite charge is the notorious Mala Ramchandin, whose past is as rich and mysterious as the island setting. Through dialogue and flashback Tyler learns of the colonialism and racism, love and envy, betrayal, incest, death, abandonment, and lesbian escape that are part of the complicated Ramchandin family history.