All Souls' Rising: A Novel - Hardcover

Bell, Madison Smartt

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679439897 ISBN 13: 9780679439899

Publisher: Pantheon, 1995

Synopsis

One of the most prolific and gifted writers at work today presents an epic novel of astonishing depth and range about the black uprising in Haiti 200 years ago. A remarkable retelling of an episode of racial hatred at its most visceral and most unimaginably destructive, All Souls' Rising is Bell's most ambitious, most deeply satisfying novel to date.

About this title

About the Author

Madison Smartt Bell is the author of fourteen works of fiction, including The Stone That the Builder Refused; Master of the Crossroads; Save Me, Joe Louis; Dr. Sleep; Soldier's Joy; and Ten Indians. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his family and teaches at Goucher College.



From the Trade Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

ost prolific and gifted writers at work today presents an epic novel of astonishing depth and range about the black uprising in Haiti 200 years ago. A remarkable retelling of an episode of racial hatred at its most visceral and most unimaginably destructive, All Souls' Rising is Bell's most ambitious, most deeply satisfying novel to date.

Reviews

In an astonishing novel of epic scope, Bell (Save Me, Joe Louis) follows the lives of a handful of characters from radically different social strata during the period of Haiti's struggle for independence. Nothing about that period was simple. In 1791, when the Caribbean island that native Amerindians called "Hayti" was divided between a Spanish colony in the east and the French colony of Saint Domingue, a slave revolt broke out in the French territory that claimed 12,000 lives in its first months. But the fighting wasn't only between black slaves and white owners; the colony had a Byzantine social structure that recognized 64 different "shades" of mulatto; of the half-million blacks in Saint Domingue, some 30,000 were free mulattos whose political interests often ran contrary to those of the slaves. The country's 40,000 whites were themselves divided over the outcome of the recent revolution in France. During the next 12 years, to increase their power bases, four racial/political groups?white royalists, white republicans, free mulattos and black slaves?formed and dissolved a string of unlikely alliances at a dizzying clip. Bell's principals here include a runaway slave looking for real freedom, the disturbed mistress of a razed sugar plantation and a royalist soldier in the embattled Cap Francais guard. Central to the narrative are Toussaint L'Ouverture, the enigmatic 51-year-old leader of the revolt, and Doctor Antoine Hebert, a Frenchman who shows up in Haiti just before the revolt breaks out. Hebert, who spends time as Toussaint's prisoner, falls for a freed mulatto. Warned by a young married Frenchwomen that "Who marries a black woman becomes black," the physician is appalled, yet heeds the very words he dismisses. Toussaint, too, bears the mark of contradiction. He appears to be a simple, devout man, but he has "learned a way to make his words march in more than one direction." A handful of chapters are set in 1802, when Toussaint is taken across the Atlantic as a prisoner. By omitting the middle of the revolutionary's story (during which he takes over Haiti, names himself governor-general and refuses to declare it independent), Bell astutely indicates that Toussaint, who saw himself as a noble warrior, was in fact motivated by a bizarre and self-defeating concept. By alluding to the end of the revolution only in a beautiful and haunting epilogue, moreover, Bell avoids the sense of victory that mars so many novels about revolution. Here at least, after more than 500 wrenching pages of rapes and massacres and fetuses impaled on pikes, there can be no question of a winner of the battle for Haitian liberation. Surviving it was feat enough. In Bell's hands, the chaos, marked by unspeakable acts of violence, that surrounds these characters somehow elucidates the nobility of even the most craven among them.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Bell's tenth book, an intricately plotted historical novel about the slave revolt in Haiti, seems like a radical departure from his quintessentially modern tales about renegades and loners. But upon further reflection, we see how the story of Haiti meshes with Bell's concern with race relations and his fascination with apocalyptic conflicts. A southerner, Bell is attuned to the nuances of a culture stratified and poisoned by the byzantine politics of color. And he is able to re-create the tension and rage of the Haitian revolution, one of the bloodiest fights for freedom, with a joltingly visceral immediacy. We feel the tropical heat, hear the whine of mosquitoes, and smell the sickening fumes of burning sugarcane, blood, and fear. And we identify strongly with Bell's intrepid characters, men and women of all hues, caught in a confluence of forces that reveals their capacity for evil and compassion. There's Toussaint, an archetypal leader, wise and tough, and Doctor Hebert, a modest man of quiet strength who falls in love with Nanon, a beautiful mulatto. Nanon is only one of several courageous women who face madness and terror with surprising composure. Bell's writing has never been more powerful or passionate than it is here, in this electrifying saga. Donna Seaman

As has been the case throughout much of its history, Haiti in the 1790s was racked by violence?the result of an intricate and sometimes brutal system of racial and social classification exacerbated by the upheavals of the French Revolution. Thus, Haiti provides an ideal setting for Bell (Save Me Joe Louis, LJ 5/1/93) to explore his interest in the motivations that all too often propel us to give vent to our baser instincts. The story centers on the bloody beginnings of the rebellion from which Toussaint L'Ouverture, a seemingly docile slave, eventually emerged as the self-proclaimed governor general of the island. Bell has crafted a somewhat complex and violent tale?it opens with a woman being crucified for killing her baby so he would not have to live the life of a slave. Not for the faint-hearted, this work offers a fascinating glimpse into a little-known episode of hemispheric history. One can be glad for the chronology and the glossary Bell includes. Most appropriate for public libraries and academic libraries where Bell's work is popular.
-?David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679439897
• ISBN 13: 9780679439899
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 530