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"The western sky of Barbadoes was ablaze. A mixture of fire and gold, it burned, and burned — into one vast sulphurous mass. It burned the houses, the trees, the windowpanes. The burnt glass did amazing color somersaults — turned brown and gold and lavender and red. It poured a burning liquid over the gap. It colored the water in the ponds a fierce dull yellowish gold."

And in "The Palm Porch," which details the ruthless machinations of a brothel within the Canal Zone, here's his stark yet gorgeous portrayal of the ransacking of the land:

"After the torch, ashes and ghosts — bare, black stalks, pegless stumps, flakes of charred leaves and half-burnt tree trunks. Down by a stream watering a village of black French colonials, dredges began to work. More of the Zone pests, rubber-booted ones, tugged out huge iron pipes and safely laid them on the gutty bosom of the swamp. Congeries of them. Then one windy night the dredges began a moaning noise. It was the sea groaning and vomiting. Through the throat of the pipes it rattled, and spat stones — gold and emerald and amethyst. All sorts of juice the sea upheaved. It dug deep down, too, far into the recesses of its sprawling cosmos. Back to a pre-geologic age it delved and brought up things."

Tropic Death was published in 1926 by Boni & Liveright, and with its republication this year it's clear new attention is being sought for an overlooked book and its author. Walrond himself was born in in 1898 in what is now Guyana, and moved with his mother to Barbados in 1906, then joined his father in Panama in 1911, where he became fluent in Spanish and worked as a reporter. He moved to New York City in 1918, and eight years later saw published this remarkable story collection rooted in a world he knew so well. Reading Tropic Death, you have to be impressed by his ability to confront life's pitilessness in such exquisitely crafted prose.

Read an excerpt of Tropic Death