You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

For you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblatt.

Today, my guest is Robert Antony.

He's the author most recently of the novel, Blessed is the Fruit, published by Holt.

He's also the author of Divina Trace, published by Overlook Press, Tusk and Paperback,

and he co-edited an anthology of new Caribbean writing called

The Archipelago.

Well, to begin with Bob, where were you born?

In Detroit, Michigan, quite by accident, because my parents were on their way from Trinidad,

and my father's in medical school,

and we ended up in the Bahamas, which is where I grew up.

And so the place that you call Sangre de Christo, is it?

Corpus Christi.

Corpus Christi.

Some bit of the body or the blood.

Is Trinidad, in fact?

It's based in part on Trinidad.

Trinidad more than anywhere else, but I like to think of it as my own, you know, fictional ground,

...