Trapped in a loveless marriage, Stephen Sagar returns eagerly to his native Trinidad when he is commissioned by a powerful island politician to write his biography. Expecting to discover a lost innocence, Stephen is at once disillusioned - old friends are no longer recognizable and strangers view him with indifference or hostility. To piece together his own past, he explores the lush island landscape and encounters a woman who once loved him. In her need to love again, his own longing begins to awaken and intensify.

Rabindranath Maharaj is the award-winning author of three short story collections and five novels, including The Amazing Absorbing Boy, which won the 2010 Trillium Book Award and the 2011 Toronto Book Award, and was voted a CBC Canada Reads Top 10 for Ontario.

In 2012, Maharaj received a Lifetime Literary Award, administered by the National Library and Information System Authority as part of the commemoration of Trinidad’s fiftieth independence anniversary. In 2013, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, which honours significant contributions and achievements by Canadians.

Rabindranath Maharaj's profile page

"Fascinating, satisfying....The Lagahoo's Apprentice is dense and rich, and the apprentice of the title [is] one of the most fully realized characters I've come across in fiction…. This is a very, very fine novel, wonderful reading for the women (and men) who've known a few lagahoos in their time." —Elizabeth Nickson, The Globe and Mail

"A satisfying delight…. It has a vivid sense of place, hilarious satire, Gothic mystery, [and] moments of wrenching poignancy." —The Toronto Star
"Maharaj's innumerable fresh and funny observations…define his style…. Sympathetic, canny, and very entertaining." —The Gazette (Montreal)

“In The Lagahoo’s Apprentice, Maharaj dares to paint a passionately honest portrait of the dark side of his sunny island home.” —The Vancouver Sun

“Observations are magnificently captured and enhance the mood of secrecy and gloom…. Maharaj is a delicate craftsman with a compelling style…The Lagahoo's Apprentice is an accomplished novel.” —National Post

“An ambitious work…There is depth and breadth in his writing, as well as the humour which marked [his] first two books.” —Winnipeg Free Press
“Vivid, memorable…. Against [a] bewitching, deftly conjured backdrop, Maharaj brings on a procession of angry, equivocal, caustically funny Trinidadian monologists.” —Quill & Quire
“The Lagahoo’s Apprentice is a fine performance by a talented writer…Maharaj brings to the page an unsentimental world-weariness and a voice of great assurance. He’s a writer with things to say.” —The Edmonton Journal