Désirée Congo
Évelyne Trouillot, translated by M. A. Salvodon, with an afterword by Annette K. Joseph-Gabriel
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The newest English translation of one of Haiti’s most powerful literary voices
Désirée Congo is a riveting, powerful, and profoundly original novel set in the final years of the Haitian Revolution at the dawn of the nineteenth century. In this richly textured work, Trouillot—one of the leading voices of the francophone literary world—constructs an intricate narrative web from the varied experiences of freedmen and women, maroons, enslaved African people and their Creole children, as well as French planters and white smallholders in colonial Saint-Domingue at a historical moment of unthinkable upheaval. It is a moving, lyrical book whose strikingly realized characters enrich our understanding of the last confrontations between the Haitian revolutionaries and Napoleon’s imperial forces—a conflict that resulted in the success of the largest slave revolt in recorded history and the independence of the first Black state in the western hemisphere.
- World Literature TodayFrom its meticulously researched historical detail to its three-dimensional characters and compelling subplots, Désirée Congo has something for everyone. Readers who know (or thought they knew) everything or nothing at all about the Haitian Revolution will be met with an epic, chest-swelling reminder of what it means, what it takes, and what’s it’s worth to live free.
Trouillot reveals a complex and formative period of the Haitian nation and, in so doing, proposes to make heard the voices of those whose struggle on both sides of the conflict is often absent from the pages of history.- Jason Herbeck · French Review
As a translator who is also a craftsperson, artist, creator, bridge builder and sculptor Marjorie Salvodon meticulously and carefully brings Evelyne Trouillot’s Désirée Congo to an English speaking audience. She does justice to Trouillot’s powerful novel and masterfully presents the complex array of characters consisting of enslaved and free people of color, mulattoes, Blacks and whites. As readers we become intertwined in the lives of these women and men who challenge the institution of slavery and claim their place in history. We marvel at the interconnectedness of color, class, power, privilege and positionality as these characters rewrite history as they live it. We are a part of their loss, suffering, courage, determination and fight for liberation.- Cécile Accilien, University of Maryland, 2023 president of the Haitian Studies Association and author of Bay lodyans: Haitian Popular Film Culture
Évelyne Trouillot was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where she lives and works as a university professor. She is the prizewinning author of short stories, poetry, and novels, including Memory at Bay (Éditions Hoëbeke, 2010; trans. UVA Press, 2015). M. A. Salvodon is a Professor in the History, Language and Global Culture Department at Suffolk University, where she is also Associate Dean of Experiential Learning, Global Education & Public Impact. She is co-translator of Tomboy with J-M Gavarini (University of Nebraska Press, 2007) and translator of The Infamous Rosalie (University of Nebraska Press, 2013).
