Massacre River [Hardcover]

Rene Philoctete (Author), Linda J. Coverdale (Translator), Edwidge Danticat (Preface), Lyonel Trouillot (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 17, 2005

"Between Haiti and the Dominican Republic flows a river filled with ghosts," Edwige Danticat writes in her superb preface to Massacre River: "Over time the river has been the site of several massacres including the one which is the subject of this tour de force by René Philoctète."

In 1937 the power-mad racist Generalissimo Trujillo ordered the slaughter of thousands and thousands of Haitians and, as Philoctète puts it, death set up shop everywhere. At the heart of Massacre River is the loving marriage of the Dominican Pedro and the Haitian Adele in a little town on the Dominican border. On his way to work, Pedro worries that a massacre is in the making; an olive-drab truck packed with armed soldiers rumbles by. And then the church bells begin to ring, and there is the relentless voice on the radio everywhere, urging the slaughter of all the Haitians. Operation Cabezas Haitianas (Haitian Heads) is underway, the soldiers shout, "Perejil! [Parsley!] Perish! Punish!" Haitians try to pronounce "perejil" correctly, but fail, and weep. The town is in an uproar, Adele is ordered to say "perejil" but stammers. And Pedro runs home and searches for his beloved wife, searches and searches " The characters of this book not only inspired the love and outrage of an extraordinary writer like Philoctète," writes Edwige Danticat, "but continue to challenge the meaning of community and humanity in all of us."

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Haitian poet Philoctete's novel paints a graphic picture of the 1937 slaughter of thousands of Haitians during the reign of the Dominican dictator Generalissimo Trujillo. In chapters that alternate among the voices of Trujillo; Pedro, a young Dominican; and Adele, his Haitian wife, the author slowly builds toward his brutal though foregone conclusion. Even as a young child, Trujillo is focused on reclaiming territory lost to Haiti along the Dominican border. Pedro and Adele are apolitical and so devoted to one another that if one disappeared, "the other would languish and die." As Haitians begin to perceive the "menace of Trujillo," Pedro fears for his wife's safety and despises his inability to help her. Philoctete's prose is a galvanizing melange of run-on sentences and surreal imagery, embodied most intensely in one wrenching chapter in which the deaths by machete taking place at the border are juxtaposed with a huge feast taking place in the Haitian capital. A harrowing, historically accurate depiction of a horrific chapter in Haiti's violent history. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

This virtuosic translation, by Linda Coverdale, is his first into English. Meticulousness characterizes the novel to the very end. (Abigain Deutsch - The Literary Review )

A classic Haitian novel. (Confrontation )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: New Directions (November 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811215857
• ISBN-13: 978-0811215855
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,499,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Le peuple des terres mêlées, December 3, 2005

By 

qarib (france) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Massacre River (Hardcover)

Massacre River
Massacre River - a title, by the way, which does not by far do justice to the original Le Peuple des terres mêlées, as the translator dutifully explains - is a book from the reading of which no serious reader will come out unmoved. Written in a prose as trenchant as matter-of-fact journalism yet as literary as Dante's Divine Comedy, suffused with the almost incredibly aromatic thereness of the land it takes place in, this short feverish novel manages both to give a very carnal voice to the atrocious events it attempts to keep alive against the anonymous flow of statistical history and to oppose to such iron-clad and banalized atrocities the ever singular lilts and words, hopes and doings, moments and despairs, smells and bodies, of those who were actually murdered. Far from the too easily dismissive label of "magical realism" the West is so wont to slap onto whatever is written under a Caribbean sky in order to forget and trivialize the actual reality it so relentlessly created and continues to impose, Massacre River firmly grounds its feet in the reality of its place and not a single image, metaphor or simile of its prose is or tries to be a literary evasion from the suffocating horror it calls back to life. Each and every word - for instance the sudden, almost chaotic and breathless, acceleration and accumulation of verbs at the end of some sentences - stands as a marker, a building block, as an effect of the endlessly deployed atrocity described. Yet, Philoctète - and in this he is one of the true writers of the very bloody 20th century - never lets go of the novel itself as the story of individuals caught up in an unintelligible reality from which they try to make sense. The love story which runs as a fil rouge throughout his text is one of the most exquisite ever conceived, and his baroque sense of humor, as well as his acute sensibility to the multifarious presences and instances of the quotidian, never bows down in a silence of petrified stupefaction in front of the horror: by his very act of telling, the mythologized Cruel and Impersonal Beast history sometimes too easily becomes in other narrations (think Heart of Darkness, for instance) is shown as real acts which real human beings inflict upon other real human beings.
I read the novel both in French and English - and Linda Coverdale's translation is, in its own right, as dazzling and as unexpected a jewel as that of Philoctète's text. The staccato rhythm of her sentences, the amazing verbal invention of her translation, the roller-coasting mastery of her syntax and connotations, the depth of her understanding even the most fluttering vacillation of punning meanings make her translation not just a work of art, but an amazingly loving tribute and homage to the author - the perfection of which puts us French to shame, for not having a readily available print of this absolute marvel of a book.

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful!!!!, April 29, 2007

By 

daly guilamo "Africa Blk" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Massacre River (Hardcover)

This book is sooo sci-fi-ish, it is incredible. I totally loved it. If you like using your imagination then this book's for you. Alot more creative than Danticat's and Prestol Castillo's works on the Massacre of 37'. Anyways, I recommend it. I think Im going to write an analysis of it soon.

Peace and Blessings.