Lyonel Trouillot – författare

Lyonel Trouillot's harrowing novel depicts a night of blazing violence in modern-day Port-au-Prince and recalls hundreds of years of violence stretching back even before the birth of Haiti in the fires of revolution. Three narrators—a madam, a taxi driver, and a post office employee—describe in almost hallucinatory terms the escalating chaos of a bloody uprising that pits the partisans of the Prophet against the murderous might of the great dictator Deceased Forever-Immortal. The drama of promise and betrayal in Haitian life inform's Street of Lost Footsteps with the grim irony and savage tenderness characteristic of writers for whom the repetitiveness of history has gone beyond tragedy, through farce, and on into insanity. With impressive originality and touching immediacy, Trouillot explores the nature of political oppression, memory, and truth.

Their father's favorite saying, between drinks and blows, was, "Life holds only bad surprises, and the last one will be death." And now, Colin observes of the man sprawled under all the broken furniture, their father was definitely and forever out of surprises. Children of Heroes is the story Colin tells of what happened—and what happened before that. Testimony, confession, a child's outpouring: this is his painfully matter-of-fact account of how he and his older sister, Mariéla, killed the man who tyrannized them and their piously pathetic mother, who is now a "blank." As he describes their flight from the slum in Haiti to an uncertain somewhere called "far away," Colin conjures a bleak picture of the life he and his sister are trying to leave behind. And whether these two—children only in age—are guilty or merely victims of the violence festering in their city is a question only the reader can answer. In its picture of a world in which the heroes and the destroyers—whether fathers or leaders—are often indistinguishable, and where life's poetry and poverty are inextricably linked, this book tells a story of Haiti that is at once intimate, universal, and otherworldly.

In a country plagued by dictatorship and insurrection, poverty and corruption, where police officers and gang members become hard to distinguish, art provides a sense of meaning and respite. As people from all walks of life protest their tyrannical leader, a painter tries to reconcile the brutal violence he sees with the beauty of his lover. A wealthy industrialist's kidnapping ties back to his past with a humble laundress from the seaside. A lovesick servant girl turns to magic to win her master's heart. Having escaped the shantytowns he grew up in, a wannabe James Bond feels their pull again when he gets involved with an alluring young woman-and her pimp. Written with the masterful language of a poet, and filled with characters at once lifelike and mythical, Lyonel Trouillot's story collection creates a multifaceted portrait of modern Haiti.