Dance on the Volcano
  • Published: 2 January 2017
  • ISBN: 9780914671572
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $37.99
Categories:

Dance on the Volcano

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A gripping novel about a girl in Haiti caught in the complex tensions of colonial society.

Dance on the Volcano tells the story of two sisters growing up during the Haitian Revolution in a culture that swings heavily between decadence and poverty, sensuality and depravity. One sister, because of her singing ability, is able to enter into the white colonial society otherwise generally off limits to people of color. Closely examining a society sagging under the white supremacy of the French colonist rulers, Dance on the Volcano is one of only novels to closely depict the seeds and fruition of the Haitian Revolution, tracking an elaborate hierarchy of skin color and class through the experiences of two young women. It is a story about hatred and fear, love and loss, and the complex tensions between colonizer and colonized, masterfully translated by Kaiama L. Glover.
  • Published: 2 January 2017
  • ISBN: 9780914671572
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 496
  • RRP: $37.99
Categories:

About the author

Marie Vieux-Chauvet

Marie Vieux-Chauvet, a seminal writer of postoccupation Haiti, was born in Port-au-Prince in 1916 and died in New York in 1973. She is the author of five novels, including Dance on the Volcano, Fonds des Nègres, Fille d’Haiti, and Les Rapaces.

Rose-Myriam Réjouis and Val Vinokur have translated two novels by Patrick Chamoiseau, Solibo Magnificent and Texaco, the latter of which won the American Translators Association Galantière Prize for Best Book. Their translation of Love, Anger, Madness was supported by a Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

Edwidge Danticat was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She is the author of Brother, I’m Dying; Breath, Eyes, Memory; Krik? Krak!; The Farming of Bones; and The Dew Breaker. She lives in Miami with her husband and two daughters.

Also by Marie Vieux-Chauvet

Love, Anger, Madness
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Praise for Dance on the Volcano

"Before the twentieth century so many important women are (to borrow the idea of Rolph Trouillot) silenced out of history.... Especially women who didn't write letters or anything like that. I admire tremendously what Marie Vieux Chauvet did, in [Dance on the Volcano], to bring such women back to life." --Madison Smartt Bell

"Like a knife thrust into the sexual, social, racial, and political passions of a provincial town" --Libération

"In three movements as somber as they are striking, Marie Vieux-Chauvet explodes Hatian society in the time of dictator François Duvalier, in a classic style stripped of all exotic lyricism.... None of the dark forces that shook the country during this tragic period are forgotten in this novel-manifesto, from which no one comes out innocent." --Le Monde

"Chauvet was nitroglycerin. She set her sights on an illness ravaging Haitian society" --Dany Laferrière

"Before the twentieth century so many important women are (to borrow the idea of Rolph Trouillot) silenced out of history.... Especially women who didn't write letters or anything like that. I admire tremendously what Marie Vieux Chauvet did, in [Dance on the Volcano], to bring such women back to life." --Madison Smartt Bell

"Like a knife thrust into the sexual, social, racial, and political passions of a provincial town" --Libération

"In three movements as somber as they are striking, Marie Vieux-Chauvet explodes Hatian society in the time of dictator François Duvalier, in a classic style stripped of all exotic lyricism.... None of the dark forces that shook the country during this tragic period are forgotten in this novel-manifesto, from which no one comes out innocent." --Le Monde

"Chauvet was nitroglycerin. She set her sights on an illness ravaging Haitian society" --Dany Laferrière

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