Massacre River - Softcover

Philoct�te, Ren�

3.76

94 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811217256 ISBN 13: 9780811217255

Publisher: New Directions, 2008

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In 1937 the power-mad racist Generalissimo Trujillo ordered the slaughter of thousands and thousands of Haitians―and, as Philoctete puts it, death set up shop everywhere. At the heart of Massacre River is the loving marriage of the Dominican Pedro and the Haitian Adele in a little town on the Dominican border. On his way to work, Pedro worries that a massacre is in the making; an olive-drab truck packed with armed soldiers rumbles by. And then the church bells begin to ring, and there is the relentless voice on the radio everywhere, urging the slaughter of all the Haitians. Operation Cabezas Haitianas (Haitian Heads) is underway, the soldiers shout, "Perejil! [Parsley!] Perish! Punish!" Haitians try to pronounce "perejil" correctly, but fail, and weep. The town is in an uproar, Adele is ordered to say "perejil" but stammers. And Pedro runs home and searches for his beloved wife, searches and searches... "The characters of this book not only inspired the love and outrage of an extraordinary writer like Philoctete," writes Edwidge Danticat, "but continue to challenge the meaning of community and humanity in all of us."

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About the Author:

Acclaimed Haitian poet and scholar Ren� Philoctete was a founder of the group Haiti Litteraire and a co-founder of the Spiraliste literary movement. He was devoted to Haiti and the Kreyol language, and after only a few months in Canada in 1966 during the Duvalier repression, he returned home for good, deciding that he'd rather be murdered at home than live in exile. He was widely respected for his fearless rejection of all forces of oppression. Born during the American occupation, he died in 1995, with American soldiers once again in his homeland.

Linda Coverdale has translated over forty books, including works by Roland Barthes, Annie Ernaux, and Patrick Chamoiseau. Her translation of Tahar Ben Jelloun's This Blinding Absence of Light won the 2004 IMPAC International Dublin Literary Award.

From Booklist:

Haitian poet Philoctete's novel paints a graphic picture of the 1937 slaughter of thousands of Haitians during the reign of the Dominican dictator Generalissimo Trujillo. In chapters that alternate among the voices of Trujillo; Pedro, a young Dominican; and Adele, his Haitian wife, the author slowly builds toward his brutal though foregone conclusion. Even as a young child, Trujillo is focused on reclaiming territory lost to Haiti along the Dominican border. Pedro and Adele are apolitical and so devoted to one another that if one disappeared, "the other would languish and die." As Haitians begin to perceive the "menace of Trujillo," Pedro fears for his wife's safety and despises his inability to help her. Philoctete's prose is a galvanizing melange of run-on sentences and surreal imagery, embodied most intensely in one wrenching chapter in which the deaths by machete taking place at the border are juxtaposed with a huge feast taking place in the Haitian capital. A harrowing, historically accurate depiction of a horrific chapter in Haiti's violent history. Deborah Donovan
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