By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 21, 2008

There is a frightening scene at the end of Emmanuel Appadocca, the first novel written by a Trinidadian in 1854 in which Emmanuel Appadocca, the major protagonist and son James Willmington, an English sugar planter, breaks into his father’s home in St Ann’s, seizes him and condemns him to death for abandoning him while he was a child. In this novel, author Maxwell Philip, examines the implications of the lex talionis–or the law of just revenge–and seeks to understand how it should be applied in the particular circumstance.
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