All Souls' Rising :

The Haiti of this novel is a malarial, fetid place, haunted by its genocidal past. The slaves are planning a rebellion and the aristocratic French plantation owners are preparing to crush it. At the heart of the novel lies Toussaint Louverture, a self-educated, second-generation African slave.

In his breathtaking and powerful novel that garnered nominations for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, Madison Smartt Bell leaves the dark contemporary world he has so brilliantly made his own in nine previously acclaimed novels and short story collections, such as Save Me, Joe Louis. Now he turns to the past and brings viscerally to life the slave rebellion that would bring an end to the white rule of Haiti in the late eighteenth century. The result is an explosive, epic historical novel of astonishing depth and range, catapulting Bell into the ranks of the finest living authors.