Product Description

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1805131 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .65 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 226 pages

From Amazon.com
Pity the poor translator who has to grapple with Martinican writer Patrick Chamoiseau's playful and imaginative mélange of formal French and Caribbean Creole--but envy the lucky reader who gets to enjoy his tasty gumbo, Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows. First published in France in 1987, Chamoiseau's debut novel is reminiscent of the work of Gabriel García Márquez and Salman Rushdie in its wild tumbling cataracts of language, its host of characters, and its freewheeling use of magical realism. Consider, for example, the origins of protagonist Pierre Philomene "Pipi" Soleil:

That evening, Héloïse went to bed a virgin for the last time, because meanwhile, black Phosphore had revealed to his sorrowing son the Method he'd learned from a sepulcher, and had turned him into a dorlis. Anatole-Anatole's modus operandi remains unknown. People get lost in conjecture trying to figure out if he used the technique of the toad hidden beneath the bed, the one of the ant that slips through keyholes, or the one of three-steps-forward-three-steps-back that lets you walk through walls. The fact remains that on the evening in question, he found himself in Héloïse's bedroom despite all locks and barricades. Putting his new expertise as a dorlis to work, he went inside her without waking her up and spent eight delicious hours on her sleeping body.

When Héloïse wakes up the next morning, bruised and bloodied, she knows she's been assaulted by an incubus and takes measures (a pair of black underpants worn backwards) to protect herself against him. Unfortunately, the damage has already been done, and nine months later she gives birth to a son, who eventually grows up to be "king of the djobbers." The novel's plot, such as it is, follows Pipi's fortunes as he wields his wheelbarrow through the crowded market streets of Fort-de-France. Chamoiseau structures his tale like a collection of oral histories, dipping in and out of the life stories of minor characters, circling back and forth in time to cover a wide range of topics from slavery to World War II to relations between the white and black Martinicans. There's little if any real character development, but that's not what this "word scratcher" is after. In his dizzying cut-and-paste collage of Caribbean life, Chamoiseau is attempting nothing less than to communicate the soul of his homeland--a challenge at which he succeeds brilliantly. --Alix Wilber

From Publishers Weekly
Published in France in 1986 and appearing in the U.S. for the first time in Coverdale's excellent translation, Chamoiseau's first novel, written before Texaco, is an astonishingly assured piece of work. Famous for rejecting the Negritude style of writing, with its combination of leftist sentiment and archly Parisian French, Chamoiseau instead salts Creole narrative styles with vernacular phrases and riddles, songs and occult stories. Narrated by the departed spirits of the djobbersAindependent haulers of goodsAof Fort-de-France, Martinique, this novel, set between the 1940s and the 1970s, tells the story of master djobber Pipi. Born to Mam Elo and a dorlis (a kind of incubus), Pipi grows up in the streets of Fort-de-France. His first job, in the time of Vichy France, is transporting Gaullist Martinicans to British Dominica. He and his partner, Gogo, generally drop them in the drink, however, which backfires one night. When Pipi makes it back to land alone, he gives up his oars for a wheelbarrow. Crowned king of the djobbers for his knowledge of shortcuts and traffic, which he demonstrates in a race to transport a country vendor's giant yam, he is nevertheless unable to win Anastase, the beautiful daughter of a master of the martial dance called laghia, and he drinks himself into the gutter. Then he gets the gold bug, and takes up a vigil over the grave of a famous zombi named Afoukal, who supposedly guards a jar of gold. Through Afoukal, Pipi channels the African spirit of Martinican history. An immensely engaging comic figure, Pipi is the catalyst for a host of interlocking stories involving everything from gravedigging to Aim? C?saire. This hallucinatory, bottoms-up account of modern Martinique is a tour-de-force of nonlinear storytelling. Notes. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Every great writer must start somewhere, and this novel was the jumping-off point for French Caribbean master Chamoiseau, winner of the Prix Goncourt for the revelatory Texaco. Published in France in 1986, the current work follows the fate of PipiA"grand master of the wheelbarrow, king of the djobbers"Ain the market of Fort-de-France, Martinique. Born rather miraculously of H?lo?se after Anatole-Anatole managed to penetrate her locked room as a dorlis, Pi-Pi (short for Pierre Philom?ne) serves as a pretext for telling the story of Fort-de France's poorAand a beautifully told story it is, rich with wonderfully wrought characters. There's Gogo the Albino, the hard-working Clarine, the hapless ElyetteApierced by love while in a cathedral and widowed early, she takes up a trade in funeral goodsAand many, many more. Throughout, their privations are evident, but the tone of the novel might be described as bustling, and the characters always sparkle with unrepressed life. Chamoiseau is a born storyteller, unspooling tale after remarkable tale like silken skeins, but the real star here is the language itselfAso gorgeous, so delectable that you will leave the book feeling slightly drunk. Highly recommended.ABarbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.