The Belle Créole (CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature translated from the French)

Possessing one of the most vital voices in international letters Maryse Condé added to an already acclaimed career the New Academy Prize in Literature in 2018. The fourteenth novel by this celebrated author revolves around an enigmatic crime and the young man at its center. Dieudonné Sabrina a gardener aged twenty-two and black is accused of murdering his employer--and lover--Loraine a wealthy white woman descended from plantation owners. His only refuge is a sailboat La Belle Créole a relic of times gone by. Condé follows Dieudonnés desperate wanderings through the city of Port-Mahault the night of his acquittal the narrative unfolding through a series of multivoiced flashbacks set against a forbidding backdrop of social disintegration and tumultuous labor strikes in turn-of-the-twenty-first-century Guadeloupe. Twenty-four hours later Dieudonnés fate becomes suggestively intertwined with that of the French island itself though the future of both remains uncertain in the end.Echoes of Faulkner and Lawrence and even Shakespeares Othello resonate in this tale yet the dramas uniquely modern dynamics set it apart from any model in its exploration of love and hate politics and stereotype and the attempt to find connections with others across barriers. Through her vividly and intimately drawn characters Condé paints a rich portrait of a contemporary society grappling with the heritage of slavery racism and colonization.