Jewish shopkeeper Jeremy Assaël decides to leave his home in Port-au-Prince when his friend and lover Lucien is killed by a vengeful police officer in front of his shop. In this atmosphere of oppression and social unrest, Jeremy wonders whether exile might be his only option. He embarks on a quest to discover the fate of his long lost school friend Fresnel, who has disappeared in obscure circumstances. Looking for answers, he consults a shady revolutionary and a voodoo priest. His long revelatory journey leads him through the mystery and horror of contemporary Haiti.
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Editorial Reviews
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"This is the dense and fascinating tale of a quest that portrays Haiti as both sensual and desperate,; cynical out of survival and long stripped off its dignity..." La Liberte "A novelist to watch closely" 24 Heures "A novel of exile and crossing... It is a travel through the multi-layered reality of Haiti." La Gruyere "This is poetic understatement in the face of horror. Not a single sentence leaves you feeling indifferent." Bertil Galland, L'Arpenteur - member of the Prix Georges-Nicole jury"
About the Author
JEAN-EUPHELE MILCE, born in 1969 in Haiti, readily identifies himself as an ex-islander. Having qualified in Applied Linguistics at the State University of Haiti, he trained in information and library management. Jean-Euphele Milce taught Creole Literature and was in charge of the main National Library of Haiti. In 2000 he settled in Neyruz, Switzerland with his wife and children.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Alphabet of the Night,
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This review is from: Alphabet of the Night (Paperback)
Alphabet of the NightBound paperback 109 pages Published by: Pushkin Press ISBN: 9781901285765 Jewish. White. Gay. Not really the most obvious recipe for success in this particular version of post-colonial Haiti. And shopkeeper Jeremy Assaël certainly does not see much success throughout Jean-Euphéle Milcé's short, cynical, often bleak Alphabet of the Night. After the death of his lover and shop guard Lucién, Jeremy embarks on a journey that takes him through the Haiti of nights, back alleys, the outback of the revolutionaries, boyloving preachers, and Vodou priests. He leaves in search of his long lost friend Fresnel, but spends most of his time finding flipsides of flipsides of a country that is at one point described as "a great big wound of hardships with a nasty expression on its face". I am trying not to imagine that. But Milcé manages to keep such images popping up as he tells this harrowing story of a man who has lived his entire life in a country where by an official decree from the President he he has for several years not been a rightful citizen. Not that he has ever felt at home in his country of birth. And it seems as if the restless history of the Assaël family were already destined to only ever make a stopover in Haiti, like a hummingbird resting in mid air, by the time Jeremy heard that all Jewish shopkeepers should hand over their stores to the government. The solution found by Jeremy's family was, like many others, to convert to Catholicism and be allowed to stay in Haiti. But the twisting history of the country has become the story of the shopkeeper's shaky sense of self: "Being in business has never driven me to make a quick profit or become famous. I serve the poor, the rich, the White, the Black, the victim and has executioner. I have always been understanding with customers who are broke, with those who are uncouth. My shop lives by other people's sorrows. I have done my best to help the hungry who pass by my door. What power could the forces of evil have over me?" The question is left unanswered, while newsflashes from an opposition radio that keeps reporting on the violence, state sponsored terror, and oppression blends with images of Port au Prince as a godawful place about to implode on itself. "The tropics and the devastating hurricanes will have to die out before the tide of fear goes down", Jeremy says, without much real hope for a tidal wave of change. Instead he keeps searching for Fresnel, and for a way out of a social mess so deep and mortal that Jeremy feels he has "the right to wear a mask of normality, to feed off the habit of dying". Eventually it is not without significance that it is through the voice of the dead Lucién that he is given a sense of where to find Fresnel - and where to find himself. Being guided by the voice of a dead man is nothing out of the ordinary in a cultural context often popularly associated with zombies, sorcery, and Vodou, but the fact that it takes a dead man to wake up a living seems very much in the spirit of Alphabet of the Night. The uncorrupted earth The prose in Alphabet of the Night is extremely callous. Almost as if it reflects the quick turn of events when a person goes from living to being shot down in the street. Almost nothing in The Alphabet of Night is about beauty or compassion or silence. Society is loud and brutal. Yet, the one glimmer of hope is found in half a page far into the story which hints at a possible future without oppression. The land, the very earth itself, is the key to a better life. Not in some neo-pastoral romantic sense, but simply because the earth itself can be freed from ongoing social decay. Life as it is does not have to unfold as it does for the earth to provide shelter, food, and to sustain society. And so, for a second on Jeremy's journey, the ground beneath the naked feet of a girl becomes a possible window onto better things: "With her bare feet, an adolescent girl draws an angel on et wet ground. Her movements, although fated to create a fleeting work of art, are like a dance in honor of the earth. In the valley, the earth is still the most beautiful expression of a certain continuity of life. Earth that is washed to its vert depths. Earth that is fertile, opening to receive the seed of the rice. Earth that is discreet, complicit, that never rejects the dead or their secrets".
5.0 out of 5 stars
Haiti,
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This review is from: Alphabet of the Night (Paperback)
For anyone who thinks Haiti is a cultural desert..you can cure your ignorance straight away with this book....very fine writing!
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