Slave Old Man

by Patrick Chamoiseau, Linda Coverdale (Translator)

Overview

The "heart-stopping" (The Millions), "richly layered" (Brooklyn Rail), "haunting, beautiful" (BuzzFeed) story of an escaped captive and the killer hound that pursues him

"Slave Old Man is a cloudburst of a novel, swift and compressed—but every page pulses, blood-warm. . . . The prose is so electrifyingly synesthetic that, on more than one occasion, I found myself stopping to rub my eyes in disbelief."
—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

Shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Patrick Chamoiseau's Slave Old Man was published to accolades in hardcover in a brilliant translation by Linda Coverdale, winning the French-American Foundation Translation Prize and chosen as a Publishers WeeklyBest Book of 2018.

Now in paperback, Slave Old Man is a gripping, profoundly unsettling story of an elderly enslaved person's daring escape into the wild from a plantation in Martinique, with his enslaver and a fearsome hound on his heels. We follow them into a lush rain forest where nature is beyond all human control: sinister, yet entrancing and even exhilarating, because the old man's flight to freedom will transform them all in truly astonishing—even otherworldly—ways, as the overwhelming physical presence of the forest reshapes reality and time itself.

Chamoiseau's exquisitely rendered new novel is an adventure for all time, one that fearlessly portrays the demonic cruelties of the slave trade and its human costs in vivid, sometimes hallucinatory prose. Offering a loving and mischievous tribute to the Creole culture of early nineteenth-century Martinique, this novel takes us on a unique and moving journey into the heart of Caribbean history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620975886
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	690,992
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Patrick Chamoiseau is the author of Texaco, which won the Prix Goncourt and was a New York Times Notable Book, as well as Creole Folktales and Slave Old Man (The New Press), among other works. He lives in Martinique.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Slave Old Man:

Winner of the French-American Foundation Translation Prize


Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction

An Editor’s Choice of The New York Times Book Review

A Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of 2018

“Imagine Walt Whitman adapting “Apocalypto” and you might approximate the awe and adrenaline of Chamoiseau’s action pastoral.”
—Julian Lucas, The New York Times Book Review

“Chamoiseau writes in a wild medley of French and Creole, sliding from dialect to classical expression like a freeform jazz musician. Linda Coverdale’s translation, the first in English, is gloriously unshackled. . . . This [is a] beautiful book, by a writer who’s as original as any I’ve read all year.”
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

“[Slave Old Man is] a myth-infused narrative . . . full of delightfully unexpected verbs . . . [that has] enduring power.”
—The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Never have I read a book that so miraculously combines propulsive forward motion with such crystalline, heart-stopping language.”
—The Millions

“Haunting, beautiful, and necessary.”
—Buzzfeed

“A richly layered, obsessive, lyrical novel.”
—The Brooklyn Rail

“Chamoiseau’s texts are linguistic interventions . . . at once literary feats and statements of cultural political protest. . . . [Slave Old Man] is poignant, timely, and radical. . . . Linda Coverdale does an impeccable, sensitive job.”
—Asymptote

“A linguistic masterpiece. . . . If you want to read something fresh and different, this Martiniquan literary novel with its mishmash of languages, voices, and styles won’t disappoint.”
—Ozy Media

★ “One can’t help but wonder why it took so long for this treasure to be translated into English. But it is here now, and the world Chamoiseau stitches together through the eyes of this aging runaway reveals the enduring cruelty of bondage and the endless creativity of its survivors and their descendants.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“Somewhere between a fever dream and a prose poem. . . . This novel is a transfixing, profound experience.”
—“Best Books of the Summer” by Publishers Weekly

★ “Martinique’s great chronicler of the atrocity of Caribbean slavery. . . . [Slave Old Man] is electric and illuminating. . . . Chamoiseau’s prose is astounding in its beauty. . . and he ups the stakes by making this novel a breathtaking thriller, as well.”
—Publisher Weely (starred review)

“The reader is invited to blaze a trail through this forest of symbols. The last chapter will shed light on the profound meaning of the fable. But the point is less to capture than to be captivated by the energy, the luxuriance, and the playful solemnity of writing that masterfully melds French, Creole, and yet other voices as well.”
—L'Express

Praise for Patrick Chamoiseau:
“Chamoiseau's characters are not only names but beings. Their conduct is drawn from the complexities of sensation rather than of action. We inhabit them naturally, their rages that roar like a rainstorm through a ravine, their sense of insult as sensitive as those weeds that close like shutters.”
—Derek Walcott

“Heir of Joyce and Kafka.”
—Milan Kundera

“My favorite Caribbean writer.”
—Junot Diaz

From the Publisher

…Chamoiseau's strongest work since his masterpiece, Texaco…Slave Old Man is a cloudburst of a novel, swift and compressed—but every page pulses, blood-warm…The prose is so electrifyingly synesthetic that, on more than one occasion, I found myself stopping to rub my eyes in disbelief.

The New York Times - Parul Sehgal

★ 03/26/2018
An escaped slave is hunted by a hound who “burst the bounds of utter slavering rage” in this heart-pounding novel from Chamoiseau (Texaco), Martinique’s great chronicler of the atrocity of Caribbean slavery. The old man, once believed to be the “most docile among the docile” slaves on an island plantation, slips away unnoticed, with “no ruminations, no grim glance toward the woods.” He has a head start on the plantation owner’s favored mastiff; by the time the animal that has already killed a half dozen fugitives is loosed, the old man is deep in the island’s forest, where “the leaves were many, green in infinite ways, as well as ochre, yellow, maroon, crinkled, dazzling.” The ensuing pursuit is electric and illuminating: for the old man, Chamoiseau writes, “the mastiff on his heels is showing him his own unknowns.” These insights into his mental strength show how the old man manages to persevere through a fall into a wellspring, branches that leave him “covered in bright blood and scabs,” and an encounter with a viper, en route to the book’s climactic confrontation. Chamoiseau’s prose is astounding in its beauty—and is notable for its blending of French and Creole—and he ups the stakes by making this novel a breathtaking thriller, as well. (May)

Publishers Weekly

02/15/2018
Along with their freedom, enslaved peoples are robbed of their names and languages, those important measures of identity. But their memories can never be taken from them. In an homage to the colonized races of his native Martinique, Prix Goncourt winner Chamoiseau spins a fable of a "vieux-negre," an elderly black man who has toiled on a sugar plantation for as long as anyone can remember. Now aged and silent, he is invisible to all but the enslaver's giant mastiff, a terrifying cur as cruel and dangerous as its master. Therefore, so the story goes, quite some time elapses before anyone except the dog realizes that the old man has disappeared. He has plunged into the darkness of the Great Woods, where the voices of generations who have fled and died before him encourage his every painful step to freedom. Their collective memories inhabit his subconscious mind, empowering the old man to face head-on the evil that's tracking him. VERDICT Published in France in 1997, this allegorical novella has been translated into English with extensive notes on various French and Creole phrases for ease of comprehension. It will appeal to readers drawn to slave narratives, folk tales, and the ineffable power of storytelling.—Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

Library Journal