This flight to freedom takes them on a journey that will transform them all, as the overwhelming physical presence of the forest and its dense primeval wilderness reshapes reality and time itself.
But it is here now, and the world Chamoiseau creates through the eyes of this aging runaway reveals the enduring cruelty of bondage and the endless creativity of its survivors and their descendants.From a Prix Goncourt writer hailed by Milan Kundera as the "heir of Joyce and Kafka," a gripping story of an escaped slave in Martinique and the killer hound that pursues himĪ profoundly unsettling story of a plantation slave's desperate escape into a rainforest beyond human control, with his master and a ferocious dog on his heels.
One can’t help but wonder why it took so long for this treasure to be translated into English. Even deceptively everyday creatures, like the mastiff sent by the master to pursue escaping slaves, transmogrify into terrifying demons, “possessed by the vibrant orange tints of a living heart of fire.” Passages like this, rich with imagery and music, occasionally flecked with vivid creole vernacular, can be plucked from any paragraph on any page.
In this slim novel, originally published in French in the late 1990s, the titular slave escapes the confines of plantation life only to encounter a wilderness dense with spirits both familiar and unexpected. Few authors embody literary movements as authentically as Martinique-born Chamoiseau, who pioneered the créolité (creoleness) genre in the 1980s, producing screenplays, essay collections, and novels, including Texaco(1997), recipient of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary prize.
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