A High Wind in Jamaica is a 1929 novel by Welsh author Richard Hughes. This celebrated short novel is a masterpiece of concentrated narrative.A tale of seduction and betrayal, of accommodation and manipulation, of weird humor and unforeseen violence, this classic of twentieth-century literature is above all an extraordinary reckoning with the secret reasons and otherworldly realities of childhood.It concerns a young girl named Emily Bas-Thornton and her four siblings, John, Edward, Laura, and Rachel. Its dreamlike action begins among the decayed plantation houses and overwhelming natural abundance of late nineteenth-century Jamaica. Their parents send them home to England on a ship that is then commandeered by pirates, as Hughes tells the story of a group of children thrown upon the mercy of a crew of down-at-the-heel pirates.First published in 1929, A High Wind in Jamaica has been compared to Lord of the Flies in its unflinching portrayal of innocence corrupted, but Richard Hughes is the supreme ironist William Golding never was. He possesses the ability to be one moment thoroughly inside a character's head, and the next outside of it altogether, hilariously commenting.The novel departs from traditional, one-dimensional models of the courageous and innocent child protagonist, for whom the audience is meant to become sympathetic. The children do anything they can to survive, actively reject their innocence, and even commit murder and occasionally turn on each other. The novel has been adapted into several films and radio and stage adaptations.