Death is big business in parts of the Caribbean. In the Jamaican capital of Kingston, funeral homes with their plastic white Doric columns and gold-encrusted ‘caskets’ are like a poor man’s dream of heaven. The dwindling belief in an afterlife — the consolation that we might ever join our loved ones — has taken much of the old-time religion out of the West Indian funeral.
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An exhibition of How Great Thou Art: Fifty Years of African Caribbean Funerals is at the Photofusion Gallery, Brixton until 5 December.
Available from the Spectator Bookshop, £25 Tel: 08430 600033. Ian Thomson’s books include the award-winning The Dead Yard: Tales of Modern Jamaica.
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