When at age 51, Joshua Éclair–victim of a pygmalianism gone awry–emerges from amnesia in a hospital in Montreal, he must explore what makes him want to erase his identity, and must undertake the process of exorcising what has brought him to this pass. This is the gripping story of a man’s search for sanity set in the fictional Caribbean Isabella Island and the various places Joshua has fled to: Montreal, New York, Tallahassee, London, Paris and Madrid.

This is a finely accomplished novel about a very modern predicament: the malformed dysfunctional identity in the global village.

“In lean, precise prose, Return to Arcadia journeys through the unspeakable and tabooed in the contemporary Caribbean, reminding us that the brutalities of slavery and colonialism continue to raise hell and fierce memory in the more secret realms of flesh and desire.”
–Thomas Glave, State University of New York

“Thomas offers a fine story of forgiveness, self-actualization, and belonging.”
—Montreal Review of Books