Slave Old Man - Tapa dura

Praise for Slave Old Man Winner of the French-American Foundation Translation Prize
Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction

An Editor's Choice of The New York Times Book Review

A Publishers Weekly's Best Book of 2018

"Imagine Walt Whitman adapting "Apocalypto" and you might approximate the awe and adrenaline of Chamoiseau's action pastoral."
--Julian Lucas, The New York Times Book Review

"Chamoiseau writes in a wild medley of French and Creole, sliding from dialect to classical expression like a freeform jazz musician. Linda Coverdale's translation, the first in English, is gloriously unshackled. . . . This [is a] beautiful book, by a writer who's as original as any I've read all year."
--Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"[Slave Old Man is] a myth-infused narrative . . . full of delightfully unexpected verbs . . . [that has] enduring power."
--The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"Never have I read a book that so miraculously combines propulsive forward motion with such crystalline, heart-stopping language."
--The Millions

"Haunting, beautiful, and necessary."
--Buzzfeed

"A richly layered, obsessive, lyrical novel."
--The Brooklyn Rail

"Chamoiseau's texts are linguistic interventions . . . at once literary feats and statements of cultural political protest. . . . [Slave Old Man] is poignant, timely, and radical. . . . Linda Coverdale does an impeccable, sensitive job."
--Asymptote

"A linguistic masterpiece. . . . If you want to read something fresh and different, this Martiniquan literary novel with its mishmash of languages, voices, and styles won't disappoint."
--Ozy Media

★ "One can't help but wonder why it took so long for this treasure to be translated into English. But it is here now, and the world Chamoiseau stitches together through the eyes of this aging runaway reveals the enduring cruelty of bondage and the endless creativity of its survivors and their descendants."
--Booklist (starred review)

"Somewhere between a fever dream and a prose poem. . . . This novel is a transfixing, profound experience."
--"Best Books of the Summer" by Publishers Weekly

★ "Martinique's great chronicler of the atrocity of Caribbean slavery. . . . [Slave Old Man] is electric and illuminating. . . . Chamoiseau's prose is astounding in its beauty. . . and he ups the stakes by making this novel a breathtaking thriller, as well."
--Publisher Weely (starred review)

"The reader is invited to blaze a trail through this forest of symbols. The last chapter will shed light on the profound meaning of the fable. But the point is less to capture than to be captivated by the energy, the luxuriance, and the playful solemnity of writing that masterfully melds French, Creole, and yet other voices as well."
--L'Express

Praise for Patrick Chamoiseau:
"Chamoiseau's characters are not only names but beings. Their conduct is drawn from the complexities of sensation rather than of action. We inhabit them naturally, their rages that roar like a rainstorm through a ravine, their sense of insult as sensitive as those weeds that close like shutters."
--Derek Walcott

"Heir of Joyce and Kafka."
--Milan Kundera

"My favorite Caribbean writer."
--Junot Diaz

Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction

Recommended by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, Chicago Review of Books, The Millions, and BuzzFeed

From a Prix Goncourt writer hailed by Milan Kundera as the “heir of Joyce and Kafka,” a gripping story of an escaped slave in Martinique and the killer hound that pursues him

From one of the most innovative and subversive novelists writing in French, a “writer of exceptional and original gifts” (The New York Times), whose Texaco won the Prix Goncourt and has been translated into fourteen languages, Patrick Chamoiseau’s Slave Old Man is a gripping, profoundly unsettling story of an elderly slave’s daring escape into the wild from a plantation in Martinique, with his master and a fearsome hound on his heels.

We follow them into a lush rain forest where nature is beyond all human control: sinister, yet entrancing and even exhilarating, because the old man’s flight to freedom will transform them all in truly astonishing—even otherworldly—ways, as the overwhelming physical presence of the forest reshapes reality and time itself. Chamoiseau’s exquisitely rendered new novel is an adventure for all time, one that fearlessly portrays the demonic cruelties of the slave trade and its human costs in vivid, sometimes hallucinatory prose. Offering a loving and mischievous tribute to the Creole culture of Martinique and brilliantly translated by Linda Coverdale, this novel takes us on a unique and moving journey into the heart of Caribbean history.