Masters of the Dew

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

JACQUES ROUMAIN, the son of a wealthy Haitian family, was born in Port-au-Prince in 1907. After being educated in Europe he identified with the resistance movement against the American occupation. He started Le Revue Indigene and published various books including La Montagne Ensorcelee (1931). He founded the Haitian Communist Party in 1934, was arrested and, after three years in prison, travelled in Europe and the United States until his return in 1941 when he established the Bureau d'Ethnologie in an effort to legitimise the study of Haiti's peasantry. He was sent in 1943 to the Haitian Embassy in Mexico. It was there that he completed this book Gouverneurs de la Rosee a few months before his sudden death in 1944.