All Souls' Rising [Paperback]

Madison Smartt Bell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1996

Second-generation African slave Toussaint-Louverture, determined to resist the excesses of the mob and still put an end to brutal French domination, is joined by black, white, rich, poor, free, and enslaved characters to form an unstoppable Haitian insurrection. Reprint.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In his breathtaking and powerful novel that garnered nominations for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, Madison Smartt Bell leaves the dark contemporary world he has so brilliantly made his own in nine previously acclaimed novels and short story collections, such as Save Me, Joe Louis. Now he turns to the past and brings viscerally to life the slave rebellion that would bring an end to the white rule of Haiti in the late eighteenth century. The result is an explosive, epic historical novel of astonishing depth and range, catapulting Bell into the ranks of the finest living authors. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Bell's epic tale of the Haitian slave rebellion was a National Book Award finalist.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (November 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140259473
• ISBN-13: 978-0140259476
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #943,343 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Arise and Weep, August 4, 2004

By 

Larry Dilg (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All Souls' Rising (Paperback)

This is the kind of book that can make you seem obsessed. Once you enter Bell's world, you're disturbed, excited, and depressed, but you can't stop talking about the book you're in. It's like having a secret that's too heavy to really divulge, but you keep alluding to parts of it, as if you were talking in code. People look at you like you're sort of cracked, but generally they think it will pass. The blood-soaked history of Haiti is cause for despair, but the revolutionary spirit of the 1790's makes you hope in spite of what you know. Toussaint is one of the great heroes of all time, and Bell makes him both human and epic. In this book, you don't develop much emotional connection to him -- that's the province of more fictional characters like Doctor Hebert and Riau -- but you care immensely about his success as a leader. You want him to be as great, as visionary, as Martin Luther King, but he belongs to a different era, a violent one. The backdrop of the French Revolution, with its mixture of rights and terror, is essential to the drama of All Souls' Rising, and most readers will need to read the appendix several times to stay abreast of royalists, Jacobins, and emissaries from the Mother Country. Some knowledge of American history might help --Jefferson, for instance, opposed the Haitian slave revolt because he feared something similar in the US which would deprive him of slaves plus the boost he got from the 3/5 compromise which gave white planters more votes, while Adams and Pickering favored emancipation and liberation -- but you can follow the essential plot without historical annotation. It's the kind of gravy that lifts the book to a higher level, but readers looking for love, betrayal, courage, devotion, cruelty, sex, and perverse logic will be sated. Contemporary maps won't help with many of the locations, but Bell has a map in the second volume of the trilogy, Master of the Crossroads, that helped me get a sense of place. The themes and the style of the book are managed with power and grace. Bell's a hell of a writer, and I believed each of the voices in the narrative. Big books like this sweep you up and carry you away, but this book sweeps the reader into a present time of continuous revolution in Haiti, slaughter in Sudan, disease and unending horror in much of Africa, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. The blood drama of Bell's Haiti gives us a red filter for understanding our own time. At the end of the book, I'm thrilled by the revolutionary possibilities, depressed by the inevitable destruction and failure, and grateful for every moment of compassion and kindness however small. I can't wait to read the next volume.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars comprehensible and worthwhile, April 1, 2001

By 

Amelia Sunderland "tesslouise" (Charlotte, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All Souls' Rising (Paperback)

I found this an extremely difficult read: I was 16, knew nothing about Haiti's history, and spoke no French. I took nearly three months to finish reading the book, because every so often I had to take a break from the horrific violence Bell portrays. In the end, however, this novel remains one of the most impressive I have ever read, in terms of the way it really made me think. The depths of terror and violence to which Bell's characters resorted shocked me. But I did not lose sight of the novel's bigger picture. Ultimately, I have little sympathy for the book's reviewers who could not see past the novel's violence and complexity. Five tries to get through the book? Try a Dick and Jane reader, then, and come back in a few years.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ominous, powerful, and exotic, December 25, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: All Souls' Rising (Paperback)

This story of the Haitian revolution is violent and disturbing, but its violence is handled with care and placed in the context of each character's psychology and motivations. The characters are believable, the history seems painstakingly accurate, and the sensory descriptions are rich and vivid. The book leaves you with new, unresolved questions about what race is -- a topic which obsesses many of the characters in the book as well.

An unforgettable read and an important one.