Alfred Mendes

Alfred Hubert Mendes MM was a Trinidadian novelist and short-story writer. He was a leading member of the 1930s "Beacon group" of writers in Trinidad and Tobago which included Albert Gomes, C. L. R. James, and Ralph de Boissière. Mendes is best known as the author of two novels – Pitch Lake (1934) and Black Fauns (1935) – and for his short stories written during the 1920s and 1930s. He was "one of the first West Indian writers to set the pattern of emigration in the face of the lack of publishing houses and the small reading public in the West Indies." Mendes' experiences in World War I were the inspiration for the 2019 film 1917, written and directed by his grandson Sam Mendes.