The Overseer's Cabin

Glissant's 1997 novel continues where The Fourth Century left off, tracing five decades in the lives of the Celat family on the beautiful, politically turbulent Caribbean island of Martinique. The novel opens with a newspaper article from the Caribbean Daily dated 1978 describing the mental breakdown of Mycea Celat before flashing back to papa-to-be Pythagore Celat, estranged from Mycea's mother, Cinna. The storytelling is both energetic and roundabout, spinning epic yarns in long blocks, creating tales within tales that reach back to Cinna's childhood and forward to Mycea's deterioration without care for chronology. Glissant, who died earlier this month (on February 3, 2011), uses language that is both playful and poetic: "An occasional flash shaped a country left in haste, forever sunk in the white sea with its bluish foam." In this important French Caribbean writer's world, past is present, and his lush prose demands to be gulped, not read. (May)