NINE MEN WHO LAUGHED. Clarke, Austin. Markham (Ont.), Penguin, c1986. 225pp, paper, $7.95, ISBN 0-14-008560-2. (Penguin Short Fiction). CIP Grades 12 and up Reviewed by Philip K. Harber Volume 15 Number 2 1987 March Austin Clarke is Canada's foremost exponent of the life of today's black West Indian immigrants in Toronto. He imposes on the Canadian short story a literary language based on the speech of the immigrants, and a world view which, though pessimistic, will be recognized by all those who have come to Canada from the Third World. His nine men (some of whom we have met in When Women Rule, McClelland and Stewart, 1985) are over and under-achievers, never to be fully assimilated into North American society. They carry within them a cultural baggage from their homeland (e.g., Barbados, in "A Funeral") from which they are equally alienated and to which they cannot decide to return. For mature students, OACs in Canadian literature, and all teachers. Philip K. Harber, Toronto Board of Education, Toronto, Ont.