Texaco (First American Edition)

Patrick Chamoiseau (author); Rose-Myriam Réjouis; Val Vinokurov (translators)

ISBN 10: 0679432353 / ISBN 13: 9780679432357

Published by Pantheon Books / Random House, New York, 1997

About this Item

First printing of the first American edition, with full number line. A very fine (as-new) copy in a very fine (as-new) jacket. A clean, very tight, certainly unread copy with price ($27.00) intact on front flap. Comes with archival-quality jacket protector. Note: Remainder dot on top edge.

Seller Inventory # FLAHIVE-1356

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Texaco (First American Edition)
• Publisher: Pantheon Books / Random House, New York
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679432353
• ISBN 13: 9780679432357
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

"Chamoiseau is a writer who has the sophistication of the modern novelist, and it is from that position (as an heir of Joyce and Kafka) that he holds out his hand to the oral prehistory of literature."
--Milan Kundera

Of black Martinican provenance, Patrick Chamoiseau gives us Texaco (winner of the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize), an international literary achievement, tracing one hundred and fifty years of post-slavery Caribbean history: a novel that is as much about self-affirmation engendered by memory as it is about a quest for the adequacy of its own form.

In a narrative composed of short sequences, each recounting episodes or developments of moment, and interspersed with extracts from fictive notebooks and from statements by an urban planner, Marie-Sophie Laborieux, the saucy, aging daughter of a slave affranchised by his master, tells the story of the tormented foundation of her people's identity. The shantytown established by Marie-Sophie is menaced from without by hostile landowners and from within by the volatility of its own provisional state. Hers is a brilliant polyphonic rendering of individual stories informed by rhythmic orality and subversive humor that shape a collective experience.

A joyous affirmation of literature that brings to mind Boccaccio, La Fontaine, Lewis Carroll, Montaigne, Rabelais, and Joyce, Texaco is a work of rare power and ambition, a masterpiece.

About the Author

Patrick Chamoiseau lives on Martinique. His other books include Chronique des sept misères and Solibo Magnifique. Texaco has been translated into fourteen languages.