Customer Reviews

Solibo Magnificent.

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What a great novel! Chamoiseau manages to create both a rich alleghory on the death of oral tradition, and a keystone cops-style farce. The style and language that Chamoiseau plays with here is a delight to read, and takes on an added weight considering the setting. It's reminiscent of Rushdie's mishmash of Indian and English to make a point in Midnight's Children. Kudos to the translator for not attempting to translate everything in the text. There are footnotes to a glossary, which at first seems daunting, but is very rewarding - I never thought footnotes could lead to so much laughter (I take that back, D.F. Wallace). Ultimately, this book is a love affair of language. Enjoy!

Patrick Chamoiseau's Solibo Magnificent is a powerful novel, both hilarious and tragic at once. In Fort-de-France, Martinique, Solibo (a Creole nickname meaning somersault or pirouette) has dropped dead in front of some of his followers after uttering a non-sequitor, "That potato!" His band of listeners, believing this to be a part of Solibo's act, wait patiently for the great man to rouse himself. When he doesn't, the police are brought in, and they at once suspect the witnesses , which include the character of the author, of having murdered Solibo. What follows is part slapstick, part theater of the absurb, part philosophy, part tragedy, part magic, all poetry. Somehow Chamoiseaux manages to meld these elements into a coherent whole that makes this novel an extraordinary experience.

As other reviewers have noted, this story is not only about the death and murder investigation of a beloved storyteller, but about the death of the oral tradition in general. Chamoiseau leaves no doubt that he intends the reader to walk away with this notion. Written words are inadequate to describe the power of the spoken; one has only to read the reconstructed version of Solibo's last words at the end of the book to understand this. Despite the somewhat heavy-handed approach to his theme, Chamoiseau tells a riveting story with natural lyricism. (Kudos to the translators!)

This author deserves a much wider readership (or is it audience?)

An incredibly readable story of an endangered species: the oral tradition. That the telling of this small epic is done with adding both French and Creole phrases (translated in a glossary) is *essential* to understanding the people living in Fort-de-France. There are broad hints at Césaire's ideas of negritude and many of Fanon's racially-charged concepts from his "Black Skin, White Masks." Chamoiseau even puts himself in the tale as the character of the "word scratcher," someone who makes a pitiful attempt to put down in words what the oral tradition is all about.

This book is a true gem.

Martiniquan writer, Patrick Chamoiseau, has written a delightful book about a young man, Solibo, who loves to tell a story. Chamoiseau beautifully portrays the conflict between the ancient oral tradition of story-telling and the modern scientific and linguistic reality.

On one level, the book is a gruesome and bloody burlesque on police methods of investigating a murder. On another deeper level, it is a lament for a disappearing culture of stories, magic, demons and superstition in favour of logic and the written word. It is also a tale of colonial stupidity and inevitability.

Chamoiseau's prose is lyrical and evocative. It is more of an oral history than a verbal study - an attempt to revive the oral history of his culture.

He includes himself as one of the characters, contrasting his status as a mere story-teller with the central character, Solibo, the embodiment of a dying culture.

Martina Nicolls, Author of "The Sudan Curse" and "Kashmir on a Knife-Edge"

Solibo Magnificent can at times make you laugh and at times make you sad at the loss of tradition. It is a touching tale of Solibo and his audience who are suspected of his murder. The story goes deeper than the comedy that takes place in the police investigation. Solibo the story teller who dies while telling a story emerges as magnificent even after death. His audience, their innocent belief in him and his words makes a touching tale as they are pitted against the cold logic of police investigation to detect the murderer. Interestingly , it is cold logic of medical investigation which brings the suspected audience respite. The beauty of "belief" and the ability of cold logic to hound or bring justice are so well captured in this readable book. The imagery and language is so new to readers of books written in English. Thanks to Amazon I could know about this book from so far away a land - India. Solibo Magnificent

Anyone who is at all sensitive to the gap that exists between the spoken word and the written word will immediately become thoroughly immersed in Chamoiseau's Solibo Magnificent. The narrator of this tale about the death of a storyteller and the events that follow his death struggles at times to capture on the page the vivacity of what only speakers can express. I've now read this novel three times and during each reading I stop and think about how differently I speak and write. Having derived such pleasure and intellectual challenge from Solibo Magnificent, I plan to read every other work of his that has been translated into English.

The novel is both pathos and a comedy. It begins with a formal police report of a fatality and a listing of people who have been rounded up as suspects in the homicide. Solibo, we learn, died in a public park and is immediately surrounded by people who debate about the best way to revive him. Instead of preparing for a funeral, these same people tell stories about Solibo and his miraculous powers. For instance, once, a farmer tried unsuccessfully to kill one of his pigs. When Solibo came to visit him, the farmer told of his frustration; Solibo looked the pig in the eyes and told it to die. The pig died. The power of the word revealed!

What is most revealing, however, is the gap that exists between the abstractions that are encased in language that can be written and the concrete nature of the language that is spoken. In one case, one suspect is taken to the police headquarters and questioned. The policeman, who speaks only French, asks, "What is your address?" and "When is your birthday?" The suspect doesn't understand either question. He is only able to answer when he is addressed by another police officer, one who speaks French and Creole. That policeman asks, "When do you go to eat dinner?" and then, "After which hurricane were you born?"

In these examples, one discovers a fuller meaning of the idea of assimilation, in this case, one that failed to take root, even though the French had dominated the island of Martinique. In its own way, the novel is a story of resistance to assimilation and a testimony to the value of such resistance for everyone who has been raised in a culture that places such great value on writing alone.

Chamoiseau began the novel with three epigraphs. One is a fragment from Italo Calvino. Anyone who has been enchanted by a work by Calvino will find Solibo Magnificent a joy to the eyes and to the inner voice that talks to us in silence.