The highly anticipated new novel and debut U.S. publication from the legendary Jamaican author of The Lunatic and The Duppy

Click here to read Chapter One and see an author photo

"When was the last time you laughed out loud at a book, and I mean the hold-your-sides, near-hystercal-with-joy kind of laughter? Dog War is a pitch-perfect and truly uplifting read, wonderfully written with a flourish and an art that is like the best conversation. Winkler is the Prozac of literature, the true feel-good factor we seek in Oprah and the likes. You want to help somebody? . . . Give them Dog War, they'll be forever in your debt."
--Ken Bruen, author of The Guards

"Every country (if she's lucky) gets the Mark Twain she deserves, and Winkler is ours, bristling with savage Jamaican wit, heart-stopping compassion, and jaw-dropping humor all at once. And Dog War is his Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, except Precious is no yankee. She's a willful, stubborn, unintentionally funny Jamaican everywoman suddenly thrust into an America that's the opposite, always bending, twisting, and changing into shapes as confounding as they are hilarious. You don't read Dog War, you wait for the sparks to fly and hope they don't commit you for laughing out so loud for so long."
--Marlon James, author of John Crow's Devil

In a new and highly original take on Jamaican life, Winkler, the Caribbean's unrivalled master of adult comedy, introduces the estimable Precious Higginson, a large-bottomed, meltingly juicy, middle-class Jamaican woman with unshakable ideas on the right and proper behavior for Christian Jamaican women, their husbands, and men and dogs in general. But, when her husband passes away suddenly, Precious finds herself isolated in a mountainous region of Jamaica where her husband had always dreamed of living.

Even worse, she finds her conventional world and her place in it coming apart--her ideas on proper behavior assailed on every side. One insulting episode after another occurs until she ends up in Miami working for a rich widow who is a fanatic about animals in general and her pampered lapdog in particular. With the indignities of life piling up on her, Precious struggles to make sense of the world she had lived in before her husband's death and to defend herself against monstrous assaults on her conventional beliefs. The climax of the story leaves Precious reeling, and sends her scurrying back home to evaluate this topsy-turvy madhouse called life and her place in it.Ê

Anthony Winkler was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1942. His first novel, The Painted Canoe, was published in 1984 to critical acclaim. This was followed by The Lunatic, The Great Yacht Race (1992), Going Home to Teach (1995) and The Duppy. A short story collection, The Annihilation of Fish and Other Stories, was published in 2004. He has also written two movies, The Lunatic (1991) and The Annihilation of Fish (1999). The Burglary, a play, was produced in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1993 and in Toronto in 2005. Another play, The Hippopotamus Card, was produced in 2005 by the German radio station WDR under the title Das Rhinozerossystem.