Search results for ""Author Patrick Chamoiseau""

NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE AND BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2018PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOKS OF 2018CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS 'MOST ANTICIPATED FICTION BOOKS OF 2018' '(A) beautiful book, by a writer who's as original as any I've read all year' Sam Sacks , Wall Street Journal'My favorite Caribbean writer' Junot Diaz'A cloudburst of a novel, swift and compressed- but every page pulses, blood-warm. . . . The prose is so electrifying . . . that, on more than one occasion, I found myself stopping to rub my eyes in disbelief' Parul Seghal, The New York Times 'Haunting, beautiful, and necessary' Buzzfeed'Heir of Joyce and Kafka' Milan Kundera***A 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. 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. In the darkness, the old man grapples with the spirits of all those who have gone before him; the knowledge that the past is always with us, and the injustice that can cry out from beyond the grave. From a Prix Goncourt writer hailed by Milan Kundera as the "heir of Joyce and Kafka," The Old Slave and the Mastiff fearlessly portrays the demonic cruelties of the slave trade and its human costs ­- a wise, loving tribute to the Creole culture of Martinique, and a vividly told journey into the heart of Caribbean history and human endurance.

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A 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. 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. In the darkness, the old man grapples with the spirits of all those who have gone before him; the knowledge that the past is always with us, and the injustice that can cry out from beyond the grave. From a Prix Goncourt writer hailed by Milan Kundera as the 'heir of Joyce and Kafka', The Old Slave and the Mastiff fearlessly portrays the demonic cruelties of the slave trade and its human costs ­- a wise, loving tribute to the Creole culture of Martinique, and a vividly told journey into the heart of Caribbean history and human endurance.

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Patrick Chamoiseau first became known to the international literary world with Texaco, the vast and demanding novel that won France's prestigious Goncourt Prize in 1992. Less well known is the fact that Chamoiseau has written a number of extraordinary books about his childhood in Martinique. One of these, Creole Folktales, recreates in truly magical language the stories he heard as a child. Folktales with a twist, fairy tales with attitude, these stories are told in a language as savory as the spicy food so lovingly evoked within these pages. The urchins, dowagers, ne'er-do-wells, and gluttons in these tales are filled with longing for the simple things in life: a full plate, a safe journey, a good night's sleep. But their world is haunted, and the material comforts we take for granted are the stuff of dreams for them, for there are always monsters waiting to snatch away their tasty bowl of stew—or even life itself. Some of these monsters are familiar: the wicked hag, the envious neighbor, the deceitful suitor, the devil who gobbles up unwary souls. Others may be surprising, and their casual appearance in these tales makes them all the more frightening—like an unexpected glimpse into a fun-house mirror. But in contrast to these folktales' more fantastic creations, the white plantation owner and the slave ship's captain remind us that these are stories of survival in a colonized land. A marvelous introduction to a world, both real and imaginary, that North Americans have ignored for far too long.

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Based loosely on the author’s life, this novel recounts the narrator’s journey following the footsteps of his Mauritius-born grandfather, Maxime, who abruptly boarded a boat bound for Madagascar in 1922 and never returned. Michaël Ferrier tells a tale of discovery as well as the elusive, colorful story of Maxime’s life in Madagascar, which included a stint as an acrobat in a traveling circus and, later, as a diver and artist on marine expeditions. Maxime’s story is one of adventure but also romance. He falls in love with a refined young Pauline Nuñes, Ferrier’s grandmother, whose well-to-do family of Indian merchants owns a hotel famous for playing the latest music—including American jazz—and throwing popular dances and parties. Over Seas of Memory weaves these personal stories with the island’s history, including its period as a Vichy-governed territory at the center of what was termed “Project Madagascar,” the Nazi plan to relocate Europe’s Jewish population to the island. As Ferrier interlaces his family’s intimate story with the larger story of colonialism’s lasting and complicated impact—including the racial and ethnic divisions it fomented—he engages with critical issues in contemporary France concerning national and cultural identity.

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“If justice had a Jericho trumpet, Chamoiseau would be it.”—Junot Díaz As migrants embark on perilous journeys across oceans and deserts in pursuit of sanctuary and improved living conditions, what is the responsibility of those safely ensconced in the nations they seek to enter? Moved by repeated tragedies among immigrants attempting to enter eastern and southern Europe, Patrick Chamoiseau assails the hypocrisy and detachment that allow these events to happen. Migrant Brothers is an urgent declaration of our essential interconnectedness that asserts the necessity to understand one another as part of one human community, regardless of national origin.

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'One of the major fictional achievements of our century' The Times On the edge of Fort de France, the capital of Martinique, squats a shanty town. It goes by the name of Texaco. One dawn, a stranger arrives - an urban planner, bearing news. Texaco is to be razed to the ground. And so he is lead to Marie-Sophie Laborieux, the ancient keeper of Texaco's history, who invites her guest to take a seat and begins the true story of all that is to be lost. Texaco is a creole masterpiece. Told in a newly forged language, it is a riotous collage of indigenous Caribbean and colonial European influences; a kaleidoscopic epic of slavery and revolution, superstition and imagination; a story of human deceits and desires played out to the backdrop of uncontrollable, all powerful History. First published in 1992, it was awarded France's highest literary award, the Prix Goncourt, and remains an unequivocal classic of Caribbean literature.

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Following in the tradition of Richard Wright's Black Boy, Joseph Zobel's semi-autobiographical 1950 novel Black Shack Alley chronicles the coming-of-age of José, a young boy grappling with his identity in colonial Martinique.As José transitions from childhood to young adulthood and from rural plantations to urban Fort-de-France on a quest for upward mobility, he bears witness to and struggles against the various manifestations of white supremacy, both subtle and overt, that will alter the course of his life. Zobel's masterpiece, the basis for the award-winning film Sugar Cane Alley, is a powerful testament to twentieth-century life in Martinique, with a foreword by award-winning Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau.

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In Experiments with Empire Justin Izzo examines how twentieth-century writers, artists, and anthropologists from France, West Africa, and the Caribbean experimented with ethnography and fiction in order to explore new ways of knowing the colonial and postcolonial world. Focusing on novels, films, and ethnographies that combine fictive elements and anthropological methods and modes of thought, Izzo shows how empire gives ethnographic fictions the raw materials for thinking beyond empire's political and epistemological boundaries. In works by French surrealist writer Michel Leiris and filmmaker Jean Rouch, Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ, Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau, and others, anthropology no longer functions on behalf of imperialism as a way to understand and administer colonized peoples; its relationship with imperialism gives writers and artists the opportunity for textual experimentation and political provocation. It also, Izzo contends, helps readers to better make sense of the complicated legacy of imperialism and to imagine new democratic futures.

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In Experiments with Empire Justin Izzo examines how twentieth-century writers, artists, and anthropologists from France, West Africa, and the Caribbean experimented with ethnography and fiction in order to explore new ways of knowing the colonial and postcolonial world. Focusing on novels, films, and ethnographies that combine fictive elements and anthropological methods and modes of thought, Izzo shows how empire gives ethnographic fictions the raw materials for thinking beyond empire's political and epistemological boundaries. In works by French surrealist writer Michel Leiris and filmmaker Jean Rouch, Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ, Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau, and others, anthropology no longer functions on behalf of imperialism as a way to understand and administer colonized peoples; its relationship with imperialism gives writers and artists the opportunity for textual experimentation and political provocation. It also, Izzo contends, helps readers to better make sense of the complicated legacy of imperialism and to imagine new democratic futures.

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