"[1] Melville was born in the former colony of British Guiana (present-day Guyana), where she spent her pre-school years in the 1940s; her mother was English, and her father Guyanese[2] of mixed race, "part South American Indian, African and Scottish".
[2] She also concerned herself with post-independence politics in Guyana and elsewhere in the Caribbean region, teaching literacy in Grenada and working at the Jamaica School of Drama, while beginning to write short stories.
[7][8] In 1981, she performed with Alternative Cabaret in one of the first stand-up shows to appear at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, alongside Tony Allen, Andy de la Tour, Jim Barclay and the pianist Phil Nichol.
Today, an astounding number of cultures coexist in the region, in varying degrees of amicability, from European to Amerindian and African to East Indian, and the Guyanese have dealt with poverty, pollution and shortages of basic commodities, including electrical power.
"[11] As well as contributing shorter writings to literary outlets including Slightly Foxed,[12] Electric Literature[13] and elsewhere, Melville has published three volumes of short stories and two novel.
Many of her characters, most of them displaced people from former colonies struggling to come to terms with a new life in Britain, attempt to find an identity, to reconcile their past and to escape from the restlessness hinted at in the title.
Other critical acclaim included a review in Publishers Weekly of "this startling debut collection" that concluded: "Melville transforms the mundane yet never loses sight of social inequities or of the pleasures of laughter.
In the book – which one reviewer characterised as "a unique look at the conflicts of ancient and modern ways"[19] – Melville explores the nature of fiction and storytelling and writes about the impact of European colonisers on Guyanese Amerindians through the story of a brother and sister.
According to Publishers Weekly: "In Melville's ambitious and richly realized debut set in modern-day Guyana, religious, social and philosophical tensions beset all the characters.
[25] In The Caribbean Review of Books, the novel was described by Vanessa Spence as "ambitious and sophisticated",[26] while Lavinia Greenlaw wrote in the Financial Times: "The world of Pauline Melville’s fiction is one in which people slip in and out of place.
"[27] Of her most recent book, The Master of Chaos and Other Fables (published in 2021 by Sandstone Press),[28] Salman Rushdie was quoted as saying: "In this virtuoso performance, Pauline Melville shows us a world in upheaval, and reminds us that that's where we live.
"[30] Selecting "Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary Discuss Their Suicides" from the book as recommended reading, Brandon Taylor of Electric Lit stated: "How deftly Pauline Melville scummons these characters....