For many readers in the United States, the literature of the Caribbean is a familiar one: Take Marlon James, Edwidge Danticat and Junot Díaz, for starters.

The Dutch Caribbean still seems an unknown territory, though, and Two Lines Press decided to publish “On a Woman’s Madness,” a novel by the Dutch-Surinamese author Astrid Roemer, without quite knowing how it would be received.

When the book — a fever dream of personal liberation set in midcentury Suriname, a former Dutch colony on South America’s Caribbean coast — was shortlisted for the National Book Award for translated literature last year, it was a pleasant surprise for both the publisher and the author.

The jury’s recognition of “this brash, lush, experimental book about a queer Black Surinamese woman” felt like a victory, said CJ Evans, Two Lines’ editor in chief, even if Roemer and the translator, Lucy Scott, didn’t win. Days after the festivities, Roemer, 76, was still basking in the glow of her success, her finalist medallion around her neck. “This is what I’ll be wearing when they bury me,” she joked.

This month, Roemer’s introduction to American readers continues with the release of her 2019 novel, “Off-White,” translated by Scott and David McKay, which echoes earlier themes — the racial and sexual dynamics of Suriname’s multiethnic society — but with a larger scope, examining several generations of a Surinamese family in the years between World War II and the 1960s.