Masters of the Dew

This outstanding Haitian novel tells of Manuel's struggle to keep his little community from starvation during drought.

The genre of the peasant novel in Haiti reaches back to the nineteenth century and this is one of the outstanding examples. Manuel returns to his native village after working on a sugar plantation in Cuba only to discover that it is stricken by a drought and divided by a family feud. He attacks the resignation endemic among his people by preaching the kind of political awareness and solidarity he has learned in Cuba. He goes on to illustrate his ideas in a tangible way by finding water and bringing it to the fields through the collective labor of the villagers. In this political fable, Roumain is careful to create an authentic environment and credible characters. Readers will be emotionally moved as well as ideologically persuaded.

The author, Jacques Roumain, is a critical figure in the development of Haitian literature and culture in the 20th century, and this novel, originally written in French, was translated in the 1930s by the noted Harlem Renaissance poet and author Langston Hughes and by Mercer Cook, professor and chair of romance languages at Howard University, who also taught at the University of Haiti, in Port-au-Prince.