The following is excerpted from a larger article about the 2000 Guyana Prize.Deonandan's collection of short stories, Sweet Like Salt Water, is of uneven quality but has stories which work well and is, on the whole, quite readable. What works clearly in his favour is the power of the imagination, a certain freshness and good writing skills, even if, he is, at times obviously 'clever'; but so is Dabydeen. Writing as a Guyanese from Canada, he brings something new to bear on West Indian fiction and this is a significant quality.