At the age of twenty-three, the narrator hurriedly packed his bags and left behind the stifling heat of Port-au-Prince for the unending winter of Montreal. It was 1976, and Baby Doc Duvalier’s regime had just killed a journalist colleague. But thirty-three years later, after his father’s death, he decides to return him to Baradères, the village where he was born.
How does one return from exile? In Dany’s case, he grounds himself in a hotel room in Port-au-Prince, afraid to see the city he has dreamed of in Montreal. Every time he ventures out of this safety zone, the past and present collide in dizzying ways – the rhythm of the language, the faces of the people, the dust on the roads. How is it that we are undeniably born of a particular place? Why are we always our father’s son?
The Return captures the tension between being from a place but not of it and the subtle ways in which the sights and sounds of memory can seduce. This is at once a novel that is new and original, that melds haiku and narration. A serious book, yet poetic, oneiric, realist. It is the novel of a great writer.
Circa l’autore
Journalist, TV and radio host, screenwriter, and director,
Dany Laferrière worked as a journalist in his native Haiti during the notorious Duvalier regime, immigrating to Canada in 1978 after a colleague with whom he was collaborating on a story was murdered. The author of twelve novels, he has won several awards, including the prestigious Prix Médicis for
The Return, and the Governor General’s award for a Children’s novel.
David Homel has translated over 30 books, many by Quebec authors. He won the Governor General’s Literary Award in translation in 1995 for
Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex? by Dany Laferrière. His novels, which include
Sonya & Jack,
Electrical Storms, and
The Speaking Cure have been published in several languages.
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