A nostalgic and erotic story that is also a deeply sophisticated look at modern Martinique A tree cannot keep secrets because its roots discreetly meet those of other trees and share its thoughts. Adelise, a young girl trapped working in the cane fields of Martinique, keeps confidence with the flowering mangrove in her backyard. Her strict and watchful mother says Adelise is a dragonfly, refusing to learn that life is not a game. When she is transplanted to the dangerous and politically restive capital, Fort-de-France, her aunt introduces her to the unsavory business of nightlife among the Mulatto elite, and Adelise comes to rely even more on her elaborate system of wistful detachment from her body. Raphaël Confiant's spare style is reminiscent of Christina Garcia's, and the ambivalent sensuality and fierce independence of his Caribbean heroine recall Edwidge Danticat's heroines. Mamzelle Dragonfly is that rare thing: a politically savvy novel that is also intimately affecting.

Mamzelle Dragonfly

Literature & Fiction

Confiant, Raphaël

Literary

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Trapped in the cane fields of Martinique, Adelise, delicate and flighty as a dragonfly, has found a way to keep her hard life separate from her secret soul. But when she is forced to move from her village to Fort-de-France, the island's unruly capital, and her aunt introduces her to the unsavory business of nightlife among the mulatto elite, Adelise must draw on ever more tenuous resources to remain free. Set against the politically charged backdrop of mid-twentieth-century Martinique, the story of this unlikely heroine's struggle unfolds in a language at once precise and enchanting, bringing to life both the inevitable harshness of life on Martinique and its inescapably lush beauty.

Bison Books

Fiction. African & African American Studies. Latinx Studies. Women's Studies. Translated by Patricia Hartland and Hodna Bentali Gharsallah Nuernberg. MADAM ST. CLAIR, QUEEN OF HARLEM is the story of a real-life woman's rise from the slums of Martinique to the heights of Sugar Hill during the Harlem Renaissance. In the years following her arrival on Ellis Island with little more than a razor and a slim roll of bank notes, St. Clair would become queen of the numbers game, facing off against both the black underworld and the white mafia. Traversing the era from the First World War, Prohibition, the Great Depression, the Second World War and the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, she became an iconic figure of the Harlem Renaissance, as a ruthless lady gangster but also as consort and benefactor to such heroes of the movement as W.E.B. Du Bois, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. "MADAM ST. CLAIR, QUEEN OF HARLEM pulls you into the life of an unforgettable woman, who will capture your imagination. This is a rare, whirling, energetic book.&#65533;&#65533;Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Madam St. Clair, Queen of Harlem

United States

Dialogos

La Panse du chacal

Contemporary

Фоліо

Écrire la "parole de nuit": La nouvelle littérature antillaise

Depestre, René

COLLECTIFS

Pineau, Gisèle

CHAMOISEAU, Patrick

Glissant, Édouard

Pépin, Ernest

Poullet, Hector

Telchid, Sylviane

Juminer, Bertène

Essays & Correspondence

La Vierge du Grand Retour

Case a Chine

Ravines du devant-jour

Genre Fiction

Lettres créoles: Tracées antillaises et continentales de la littérature. Haïti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane (1635-1975)

Allee Des Soupirs

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Confiant, Raphaël. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Confiant, Raphaël