Salkey’s Disaster Quartet (the first three natural, the last man-made) uses the landscape and climate of Jamaica to explore the imaginations and concerns of groups of children; the books are well written, but their primary merit is in taking their audience seriously, and refusing to talk down to them. Zadie Smith described the first volume as ‘a Y.A. novel before Y.A. was a term. I remember it as the book that made me want to write’.