In The Times, a reviewer said, "As to Lovelace's language, he is in a world of his own. It is a carnival of Creole sounds, and this is the deepest ideology of the novel, the display of the power of West Indian speech, the emancipation of the West Indian tongue from the shackles of the English sentence."[11]
The Publishers Weekly review noted: "Using language that's as lush as the foliage of Trinidad and dialogue as vivid as the Caribbean, Lovelace creates a parable that applies to any nation struggling with unresolved racial issues and to any people struggling to free themselves from their past."[12]
In 1997, Salt was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book),[13] and was shortlisted for the 1998 International Dublin Literary Award.[14]
Salt contains a semi-fictionalised version of Daaga, a 19th-century rebel against British rule and leader of the St. Joseph Mutiny. Lovelace's account of the mutiny has been credited as one of the first sources to rebut myths about the mutineers perpetuated by British colonial sources.[15]
In 2022, Salt was included on the Big Jubilee Read, a list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors produced to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee. The official site said that Salt "is an extraordinary tour de force by one of the pre-eminent literary presences in the Caribbean, a work which explores like none before it the intermingling of cultures that is the contemporary West Indian experience. The novel blends historical and social detail with political didacticism, but never loses Lovelace's humour or his painterly boldness with language."[16][17]
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