Jane Hiddleston is Professor of Literatures in French at the University of Oxford.

“This groundbreaking volume is an erudite illumination of Césaire: from Negritude to his call for the reinvention of black culture and identity; from the eruptive challenge of his poetry as revolt to his engagement with political activism.”Adlai Murdoch, Penn State University“Jane Hiddleston succeeds in rendering a difficult writer eminently readable, and she moves effortlessly between her author’s better known political positions and his commitment to poetry, the theatre and the essay.”A. James Arnold, University of Virginia

• IntroductionChapter One1930s Paris and the Cahier d’un retour au pays natal: ‘It is beautiful and good and legitimate to be nègre’Chapter TwoWartime Martinique, Tropiques, and Les Armes miraculeuses: ‘Open the windows. Air. Air’Chapter ThreeDepartmentalisation, Soleil cou coupé and Corps perdu: ‘I Shall Command the Islands to Exist’Chapter FourThe Political Upheavals of the 1950s: ‘History I tell of the awakening of Africa’Chapter FiveThe Theatre of Decolonisation: ‘One does not invent a tree, one plants it’Chapter SixPolitical and Poetic Disillusionment: ‘I inhabit a Sacred Wound’Afterword

Jane Hiddleston is Professor of Literatures in French at the University of Oxford.

“This groundbreaking volume is an erudite illumination of Césaire: from Negritude to his call for the reinvention of black culture and identity; from the eruptive challenge of his poetry as revolt to his engagement with political activism.”Adlai Murdoch, Penn State University“Jane Hiddleston succeeds in rendering a difficult writer eminently readable, and she moves effortlessly between her author’s better known political positions and his commitment to poetry, the theatre and the essay.”A. James Arnold, University of Virginia

• IntroductionChapter One1930s Paris and the Cahier d’un retour au pays natal: ‘It is beautiful and good and legitimate to be nègre’Chapter TwoWartime Martinique, Tropiques, and Les Armes miraculeuses: ‘Open the windows. Air. Air’Chapter ThreeDepartmentalisation, Soleil cou coupé and Corps perdu: ‘I Shall Command the Islands to Exist’Chapter FourThe Political Upheavals of the 1950s: ‘History I tell of the awakening of Africa’Chapter FiveThe Theatre of Decolonisation: ‘One does not invent a tree, one plants it’Chapter SixPolitical and Poetic Disillusionment: ‘I inhabit a Sacred Wound’Afterword