''Indigo'' is a 1992 novel written by

Marina Warner Dame Marina Sarah Warner, (born 9 November 1946) is an English historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publicat ...

, published by

Chatto & Windus Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Penguin Random House that was formerly an independent book publishing company founded in London in 1855 by John Camden Hotten. Following Hotten's death, the firm would reorganize under the names of his business ...

in the UK and

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publi ...

in the US. It is a modernized and altered retelling of

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

's '' The Tempest''. Within the novel, Warner appropriates Shakespeare's original plot and characters to fit a dual reality, spanning the 17th and 20th centuries, and the colonial sphere of the Caribbean alongside post-colonial London. She expands certain characters: for example,

Sycorax Sycorax is an unseen character in William Shakespeare's play '' The Tempest'' (1611). She is a vicious and powerful witch and the mother of Caliban, one of the few native inhabitants of the island on which Prospero, the hero of the play, is ...

, Shakespeare's dark witch, is given her own identity as indigo maker and village sage. The colonialist realities of 'discovery' and the conquering of 'new' lands are played out in the novel's first section. Finally, the characters of Miranda and

Caliban Caliban ( ), son of the witch Sycorax, is an important character in William Shakespeare's play '' The Tempest''. His character is one of the few Shakespearean figures to take on a life of its own "outside" Shakespeare's own work: as Russell H ...

(recreated as Dulé and George/Shaka) are unified in a shared acknowledgement of past colonial wrongs.

* Döring, Tobias. (2001). "Woman, Foundling, Hyphen: The Figure of Ariel in Marina Warner's Indigo", in ''Alizès: revue angliciste de la rèunion 20: Writing as Re-Vision'', ed. Eileen Williams-Wanquet, 9-26. * Döring, Tobias. (1998). "Chains of Memory: English-Caribbean Cross-Currents in Marina Warner's Indigo and David Dabydeen's Turner", in: ''Across the Lines. Intertextuality and Transcultural Communication in the New Literatures in English'', ed. Wolfgang Klooss. Amsterdam, Atlanta, 191-204. * Döring, Tobias. (1996). "Writing is Continual Remapping. An Interview with Marina Warner", in ''Hard Times'' 56, 28-33. 1992 British novels Modern adaptations of works by William Shakespeare Novels based on The Tempest Novels set in the Caribbean Novels set in London Chatto & Windus books {{1990s-novel-stub

Further reading