Minty Alley is a novel written by Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James in the late 1920s, and published in London by Secker & Warburg in 1936, as West Indian literature was starting to flourish.

"[2] According to Christian Høgsbjerg, James later noted: "'the basic constituent of my political activity and outlook' was already set out in 'the "human" aspect' of Minty Alley, the unpublished novel he wrote in 1928 about the working people of one 'barrack-yard' he stayed in that summer.

"[3] James arrived in the United Kingdom in 1932, intent on a career as a writer and bearing the manuscript of Minty Alley,[4] and found employment writing about cricket for the Manchester Guardian.

Set in Port of Spain, Trinidad, the book opens with Mr. Haynes deciding to rent part of a house situated nearby on the title street—a very short alley.

Rouse arrives with her new lodger, a nurse named Jackson, and the rest in the house engage in a lot of conversation soon after.

The next morning, while Rouse and niece are attending Mass, he secretly encounters a brief love affair between Benoit and the lodger nurse.

One morning, a stay-at-home Haynes witnesses Sonny, Nurse Jackson's son, being beaten by the landlord over his prize for winning a marbles game: a kiss for his opponent, Maisie.

Then, as she calls him out like she would a dog, Haynes misses his chance to save Sonny, who is intent on staying with him for protection.

But upon a further caning by Sonny's mother, the bachelor decides he must move back to Ella, even with an injured foot.

Troubled times thus begin herein: another morning later, a policeman asks for Aucher, who turns out to be a thief; and quarrels between Benoit and Mrs.

Surprisingly, Nurse Jackson passes her examinations, thanks partly to Benoit's help, but nothing more than her affair with the landlord is talked of for days at No.

Their wedding takes place at nine on a Sunday morning, at the start of the month, but the people at the house are getting impatient about Miss Atwell's arrival from the ceremony.

When she returns at 11, she tells them everything that happened during that ceremony (the centre of attention being the nurse's expensive white fugi dress).

Rouse is warned by Haynes, it will take eight years before the house can fully be paid off, even with her cake business on the decline.

In the midst of a quarrel between Rouse and niece, over Haynes' alienation from Ella, the bachelor is refunded his boarding fee.

On the morning of her trial, everyone but Aucher is in Court to hear of the nurse's fate: she is fined £15 or three months in prison.

Later, due to accusations about her husband living with another woman, the nurse and her son leave for the United States.

This is due to heavy work and a love affair with Sugedo, which makes Maisie develop hatred for the servant.

Four nights later, Haynes meets her at a nearby park for the last time; she tells the bachelor of her plans for New York City.

Late that same night, Haynes decides that he should end his life at the house, for all the effects that Maisie's immigration has left on him.

Next morning, 22 September, he wakes up uneasily to the news of McCarthy Benoit's death: this event, in turn, causes regular life at No.

Entering October, Haynes finds new lodgings with Ella's help, and this leaves Rouse and Atwell as the caretakers of the house before it can legally be sold.

[5] In 2021, a new edition was published by Penguin Books (ISBN 978-0-241-48266-7), in the series "Black Britain: Writing Back" curated by Bernardine Evaristo.

[6] Writing in Kirkus Reviews on the 80th anniversary of Minty Alley's publication, Gregory McNamee says: "In that complex though short novel, James condenses a whole world of class and ethnic differences within the short street for which the book is named, with servants and working people scrambling to make a living while the somewhat better-off residents of the alley feud and scheme among themselves.

"[2] A dramatisation by Margaret Busby[7] of Minty Alley, directed by Pam Fraser Solomon (with a cast that included Doña Croll, Angela Wynter, Martina Laird, Nina Wadia, Julian Francis, Geff Francis, Vivienne Rochester and Burt Caesar), was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 12 June 1998,[8][9][10] winning a Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) "Race in the Media Award" in 1999.