Overview

A mesmerizing novel from one of the most important writers working today, winner of the alternative Nobel Prize Francis Sancher, a handsome outsider, loved by some and reviled by others, is found dead, face down in the mud on a path outside Riviere au Sel, a small village in Guadeloupe. No one is particularly surprised since Sancher, a secretive and melancholy man, had often predicted an unnatural death for himself. As the villagers come to pay their respects, they each reveal another piece of the mystery behind his life and death. Like pieces of an elaborate puzzle, their memories interlock to create a rich and intriguing portrait of a man and a community. A beautifully crafted, Rashomon-like novel, this gripping story, first published in France in 1989, is imbued with all the nuances and traditions of Caribbean culture.

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9780241530054

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Reviews

The grand queen, the empress, of Caribbean literature -- Fiammetta Rocco * Guardian * Maryse Conde's prodigious fictional universes are founded on a radical and generative disregard for boundaries based on geography, religion, history, race, and gender -- Angela Y. Davis A masterly storyteller * New York Times Book Review * A treasure of world literature, writing from the center of the African diaspora with brilliance and a profound understanding of all humanity -- Russell Banks Conde writes elegantly in a style that beautifully survives translation from the French. . . She gives readers a flavor of the French and Creole stew that is the Guadeloupan tongue. In so doing, Conde conveys the many subtle distinctions of color, class, and language that made up this society * Chicago Tribune *

The grand queen, the empress, of Caribbean literature -- Fiammetta Rocco * Guardian * Maryse Conde's prodigious fictional universes are founded on a radical and generative disregard for boundaries based on geography, religion, history, race, and gender -- Angela Y. Davis A story of life in all its flavours . . . a fluid, mobile narrative, passing easily from person to person. Fascinating and beautiful -- John Self * The Observer * A masterly storyteller * New York Times Book Review * A treasure of world literature, writing from the center of the African diaspora with brilliance and a profound understanding of all humanity -- Russell Banks Conde writes elegantly in a style that beautifully survives translation from the French. . . She gives readers a flavor of the French and Creole stew that is the Guadeloupan tongue. In so doing, Conde conveys the many subtle distinctions of color, class, and language that made up this society * Chicago Tribune *

Author Information

Maryse Conde was born at Pointe- -Pitre, Guadeloupe, in 1937 and spent most of her life in West Africa (Guinea, Ghana and Senegal), France and the US, where she taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA and Columbia. The publication of her bestselling third novel, Segu (1984), established her pre-eminent position among Caribbean writers. She won Le Grand Prix Litteraire de la Femme in 1986 as well as Le Prix de L'Academie Fran aise in 1988 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2015. In 2018 she was awarded the alternative Nobel prize for literature and described as a 'grand storyteller who belongs to world literature'.

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