Anthony C. Winkler (25 February 1942 – 18 September 2015) was a Jamaican-born author, lecturer, freelance writer, playwright and screenwriter.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, he attended school in Kingston and then in Montego Bay, St. James, and later received Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English at California State University in Los Angeles.
His fiction writing's settings are always in Jamaica, though the exact locations and the characters who live in them differ with each plot. Each story paints a picture of Jamaica during the time period in which the story is set, and illustrates the various social, racial and class divides that exist(ed) among Jamaica's people, particularly between the 1950s and 1970s.
Among his most well-known works:
- The Painted Canoe (1984)
- The Lunatic (1987), which spawned a film in 1991 starring Paul Campbell and Carl Bradshaw
- The Great Yacht Race (1992)
- The Burglary, a play produced in Jamaica in 1993 and in Toronto in 2005
- Going Home to Teach (1995), an autobiographical account of a year he spent teaching at a teacher-training college in Jamaica
- The Duppy (1997)
- The Annihilation of Fish (1999), a screenplay filmed in Los Angeles and starring James Earl Jones and Margot Kidder
- The Annihilation of Fish and Other Stories (2004), a short story collection
- Dog War (2006)
- Crocodile (2009)
Common tropes in Anthony Winkler's works:
- Abusive Parents
- All Men Are Perverts: Most of the male characters are portrayed to have this mindset.
- Ax-Crazy: Those who suffer from madness in his stories, whether they are main characters or not. In The Lunatic it's played for laughs.
- Bad Boss
- Big Eater
- Big Fancy House
- Bigger Is Better in Bed
- Butt-Monkey: Winkler has these in his stories too, mostly consisting of men whose wives or girlfriends beat them up regularly. Precious, the main character in Dog War, counts as a female example.
- Character Development: Most of Winkler's characters get this in some form. The best example is Baps in The Duppy.
- Christianity is Catholic: Played straight with certain individual characters, although other Christian denominations are acknowledged and sometimes jabbed at.
- Comedic Sociopathy
- Dark and Troubled Past: Several characters across Winkler's works.
- Deadpan Snarker: At least one in every story.
- The Determinator: Winkler's protagonists are often this.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male
- Flat-Earth Atheist: The doctor in The Painted Canoe, Inga in The Lunatic, and the philosopher in The Duppy are examples.
- Happily Married: A number of his characters.
- Jerkass: Winkler makes sure, for the most part, that these characters are VERY unlikeable, both in-story and by the reader.
- Kids Are Cruel
- Mama Bear: Mothers who aren't Abusive Parents will often be this. On the men's side, Zachariah in The Painted Canoe is a Papa Wolf.
- Manly Tears: Zachariah in The Painted Canoe and Aloysius in The Lunatic are capable of this.
- Parental Abandonment: At least one character in each of Winkler's books will have had parents who ditched them during their childhoods.
- Past Experience Nightmare
- Precision F-Strike: Winkler's books aren't exactly meant for children. That being said, while conventional swear-words are used, Winkler also utilizes Jamaican swear-words in his books' narratives, a common one being "bumbo."
- Rape as Backstory
- Real Life Writes the Plot
- Rule of Funny: The Lunatic, Dog War, and The Duppy in particular run on this.
- Tsundere: Carina in The Painted Canoe, Inga in The Lunatic, and Roxanne in The Great Yacht Race are examples.
