 |
| Dany Laferrière Karibe Hotel Port-au-Prince after the earthquake |
be remembered the Photo of Dany Laferrière in Port-au-Prince, in the courtyard Karibe, face tight, notebook in hand. Haiti's capital had been shaken by an earthquake which had decided to strike January 12, 2010 ... 16 h 53. A time to turn green with envy the railway companies.
Laferrière was there at that particular time. A year earlier he had published The Riddle of the return (Grasset, Prix Médicis 2009), his most ambitious novel, in which he traced the inner quest of the father disappeared without having "passed the baton" to his son become one of French-speaking writers foreground.
was the poet's book of the migrant, the exile, and especially the response of the "second generation of Haitians, the target of the Duvalier dictatorship. And we entered Haiti with infinite emotion, guided by the author who wanted to show us every inch of her vanished youth, to introduce the naive painters, daily life, before we propose as a lunch prepared by his lawyer mother, wife more than ever standing inextinguishable torch in the darkness of a nation that holds the world record for coups.
Laferrière us back once again with his island is moving beneath me. Some read this book as a "notepad" for those who have not seen or experienced "it." The time is shortened and the voyeurism, the human tragedy being one of the most popular ingredients. Laferrière knows and his writing at once sublime and peaceful opposition to misery not to give us an account of the damage but the act of rebirth of a land still démantibulée whose inhabitants jealously maintain dignity. The earthquake did not win, otherwise why the concrete fell it while the flowers have resisted? It is basically the people who dictated this book.
The "I" becomes collective Laferrière. Main characters, Haitians - missing or earthquake survivors, friends, relatives or strangers cross the street - are expressed while the author is aware of his role. It is a book of life, meetings, whispers, conversations. It reviews the mother Laferriere as we had left in the riddle, and was heard telling his son:
"I will have seen everything in this country of coups Military repeated cyclones, floods devastating hereditary dictatorships, and now an earthquake. "
Pace Laferrière's nephew - one of the characters and aspiring writer - is moving beneath me should read the novel of Haiti, this novel as the writer points out, occurs in a place (Haiti), at a time (4:53 p.m.) and features more than two million Haitians. Not forgetting, of course, those who, near or far, have come to the rescue of the first black republic.
Alain Mabanckou
This book review was published in the literary pages of Figaro of January 27, 2011
0 comments:
Post a Comment