Overview

Originally published in 1939, Aime Cesaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal is a landmark of modern French poetry and a founding text of the Negritude movement. This bilingual edition features a new authoritative translation, revised introduction, and extensive commentary, making it a magisterial edition of Cesaire's surrealist masterpiece.

Full Product Details

9780822368960

Table of Contents

Reviews

This new translation's directness immediately compels the reader. It is raw and poetic, and cuts to the heart of the matter. It makes me appreciate anew Cesaire's genius, rendered as it is here in his seductive language. -- Francoise Lionnet, author of * The Known and the Uncertain: Creole Cosmopolitics of the Indian Ocean * Brilliant, lively, and exact, N. Gregson Davis's translation swoops and soars through all the ambiguities, obscurities, and revelations that make Cesaire's poem a great landmark of Francophone literature. This is the definitive edition for English readers. -- Christopher L. Miller, author of * The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade * Nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of our time. -- Andre Breton Cesaire's classic text, witnessing the performative contradiction of the postcolonial voice, has found its appropriate translator, a Caribbean classicist, as was the poet himself. The translator's note is a rare teaching aid. This bilingual edition, introduced and annotated by a uniquely masterful critic from Africa, F. Abiola Irele, who has done more to establish the Cesaire canon than any other critic, brings Homecoming home. An invaluable book for student, teacher, scholar, indeed for the global citizen. -- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

Cesaire's classic text, witnessing the performative contradiction of the postcolonial voice, has found its appropriate translator, a Caribbean classicist, as was the poet himself. The translator's note is a rare teaching aid. This bilingual edition, introduced and annotated by a uniquely masterful critic from Africa, Francis Abiola Irele, who has done more to establish the Cesaire canon than any other critic, brings Homecoming home. An invaluable book for student, teacher, scholar, indeed for the global citizen. -- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of our time. -- Andre Breton Brilliant, lively, and exact, N. Gregson Davis's translation swoops and soars through all the ambiguities, obscurities, and revelations that make Cesaire's poem a great landmark of Francophone literature. This is the definitive edition for English readers. -- Christopher L. Miller, author of The French Atlantic Triangle: Literature and Culture of the Slave Trade This new translation's directness immediately compels the reader. It is raw and poetic, and cuts to the heart of the matter. It makes me appreciate anew Cesaire's genius, rendered as it is here in his seductive language. -- Francoise Lionnet, author of The Known and the Uncertain: Creole Cosmopolitics of the Indian Ocean

Author Information

AimÉ CÉsaire (1913–2008) was a Martinican poet, critic, essayist, playwright, and statesman; a founder of the NÉgritude movement; and one of the most influential Francophone Caribbean intellectuals of the twentieth century. N. Gregson Davis is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities at Duke University. F. Abiola Irele (1936–2017) was Associate of the Hutchins Center at Harvard University and had previously taught at the University of Ibadan, Ohio State University, Harvard University, and Kwara State University.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available