Cathedral of the August Heat

Haitian writer Clitandre blends traditional narrative, fragments of conversation, dreams and visions to bring to life the shantytown surrounding Port-au-Prince, where John, a bus driver, his son Raphael and their fellow denizens experience a hideous poverty that is outside the ken of most Americans. Time is fluid and is marked more by children growing upor dyingthan by dates, since the community is too poor to buy new calendars every year. ""Progress'' comes only in the form of electricity, and ominous factory sheds, where workers are locked in all day, push many of the poor into the swamp. Brutal police curtail the shanty dwellers' few freedoms. But in this novel, the poor have had enough. After Raphael is murdered by the police, John leads the people in concert with farmers from the countryside in an uprising on the anniversary of Haiti's independence. Jones masterfully translates Haitian patois into West Indian English. (June)