Slave Old Man, Chamoiseau Patrick

From a Prix Goncourt writer hailed by Milan Kundera as the heir of Joyce and Kafka, a gripping story of an escaped slave in Martinique and the killer hound that pursues him

From one of the most innovative and subversive novelists writing in French, a writer of exceptional and original gifts (The New York Times), whose Texaco won the Prix Goncourt and has been translated into fourteen languages, Patrick Chamoiseaus Slave Old Man is a gripping, profoundly unsettling story of an elderly slaves daring escape into the wild from a plantation in Martinique, with his master and a fearsome hound on his heels.

We follow them into a lush rain forest where nature is beyond all human control: sinister, yet entrancing and even exhilarating, because the old mans flight to freedom will transform them all in truly astonishing--even otherworldly--ways, as the overwhelming physical presence of the forest reshapes reality and time itself. Chamoiseaus exquisitely rendered new novel is an adventure for all time, one that fearlessly portrays the demonic cruelties of the slave trade and its human costs in vivid, sometimes hallucinatory prose. Offering a loving and mischievous tribute to the Creole culture of Martinique and brilliantly translated by Linda Coverdale, this novel takes us on a unique and moving journey into the heart of Caribbean history.