General Sun, My Brother

Alexis was a well-known Haitian writer and political figure whose first novel, published in French in 1955, appears for the first time in English here. Like Malraux and Richard Wright, Alexis was interested in the confrontation between the oppressor and the oppressed, and in this novel, he mixes a sobering proletarian realism with a vital depiction of Haitian folklife. The story follows a young man of peasant origin named Hilarius Hilarion, who is thrown into prison after an attempted robbery, where he is influenced and politicized by Communist organizer Pierre Roumel. Once out of jail, Hilarion marries Claire-Heureuse, who runs a small shop while Hilarion holds down a series of semiskilled jobs. He also goes to night school, becoming further radicalized, reading Haitian history and talking to a Communist friend, Doctor Jean-Michel. When a fire destroys the shop and Hilarion loses his job, he and pregnant Claire-Heureuse migrate to the Dominican Republic, where he becomes a sugarcane cutter, laboring under abysmal conditions When the cutters strike, they are met by Trujillo's troops and a massacre ensues. Hilarion, Claire-Heureuse and their child struggle to make it back to Haiti, but Hilarion dies in the attempt. Sometimes the bluntness of Alexis's political agenda compromises his storytelling, with tedious denunciations of the bourgeoisie, anarchists and ""surrealist garbage,"" but his account of the exploitation of the poor in Haiti and the massacres in the Dominican Republic are important documents of this terrible era in Caribbean history (and may interest readers of Edwidge Danticat's Farming the Bones). A glossary and introduction provide necessary linguistic, political and biographical context for Alexis's work. (Dec.) FYI: Beginning his writing career in the 1930s, Alexis published several novels and plays. A committed Marxist, he joined a small contingent in Cuba that attempted to invade Haiti in 1961. He was arrested and disappeared, and is presumed dead.