Slave Old Man

The heart-stopping (The Millions), richly layered (Brooklyn Rail), haunting, beautiful (BuzzFeed) story of an escaped captive and the killer hound that pursues himSlave Old Man is a cloudburst of a novel, swift and compressed--but every page pulses, blood-warm. . . . The prose is so electrifyingly synesthetic that, on more than one occasion, I found myself stopping to rub my eyes in disbelief. --Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Patrick Chamoiseau's Slave Old Man was published to accolades in hardcover in a brilliant translation by Linda Coverdale, winning the French-American Foundation Translation Prize and chosen as a Publishers WeeklyBest Book of 2018. Now in paperback, Slave Old Man is a gripping, profoundly unsettling story of an elderly enslaved person's daring escape into the wild from a plantation in Martinique, with his enslaver 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 man's 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. Chamoiseau's 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 early nineteenth-century Martinique, this novel takes us on a unique and moving journey into the heart of Caribbean history.

Praise for Slave Old Man: Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award in FictionAn Editor's Choice of The New York Times Book ReviewWinner of the 2019 Scott Moncrieff Prize for Translation Winner of the 2019 Best Translated Book Award for FictionWinner of the French-American Foundation Translation PrizeA Publishers Weekly's Best Book of 2018Imagine Walt Whitman adapting Apocalypto and you might approximate the awe and adrenaline of Chamoiseau's action pastoral.--Julian Lucas, The New York Times Book ReviewChamoiseau writes in a wild medley of French and Creole, sliding from dialect to classical expression like a freeform jazz musician. Linda Coverdale's translation, the first in English, is gloriously unshackled. . . . This [is a] beautiful book, by a writer who's as original as any I've read all year.--Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal"The reader is invited to blaze a trail through this forest of symbols. The last chapter will shed light on the profound meaning of the fable. But the point is less to capture than to be captivated by the energy, the luxuriance, and the playful solemnity of writing that masterfully melds French, Creole, and yet other voices as well."--L'ExpressChamoiseau's texts are linguistic interventions . . . at once literary feats and statements of cultural political protest. . . . [Slave Old Man] is poignant, timely, and radical. . . . Linda Coverdale does an impeccable, sensitive job.--AsymptoteA linguistic masterpiece. . . . If you want to read something fresh and different, this Martiniquan literary novel with its mishmash of languages, voices, and styles won't disappoint.--OZY Media"Haunting, beautiful, and necessary."--Buzzfeed"A richly layered, obsessive, lyrical novel."--The Brooklyn RailA thunderclap of a novel. His rich language, brilliant in Linda Coverdale's English, evokes the underground forces of resistance that carry the slave old man away. It's a novel for fugitives, and for the future.--Best Translated Book Award for Fiction, 2019 "Somewhere between a fever dream and a prose poem. . . . This novel is a transfixing, profound experience."--Best Books of the Summer by Publishers WeeklyOne can't help but wonder why it took so long for this treasure to be translated into English. But it is here now, and the world Chamoiseau stitches together through the eyes of this aging runaway reveals the enduring cruelty of bondage and the endless creativity of its survivors and their descendants.--Booklist (starred review)Martinique's great chronicler of the atrocity of Caribbean slavery. . . . [Slave Old Man] is electric and illuminating. . . . Chamoiseau's prose is astounding in its beauty. . . and he ups the stakes by making this novel a breathtaking thriller, as well.--Publisher Weekly (starred review)

Patrick Chamoiseau is the author of Texaco, which won the Prix Goncourt and was a New York Times Notable Book, as well as Creole Folktales and Slave Old Man (The New Press), among other works. He lives in Martinique.