The Old Slave and the Mastiff: The gripping story of a plantation slave's desperate escape - Tapa dura

NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE AND BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2018

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOKS OF 2018

CHICAGO 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

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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.

The fugitive-the African doomed to the injurious islands-did not recognize even the taste of
night. This unknown night was less dense, more naked, it was unnerving. He heard the dogs far
behind, but already the acacias had snatched him from the hunters' realm, and, man from vast
lands, thus he entered another history, all unaware that there, times were beginning again for
him.