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Book Summary and Reviews of Love, Anger, Madness by Marie Vieux-Chauvet

Love, Anger, Madness by Marie Vieux-Chauvet

Love, Anger, Madness

A Haitian Trilogy

by Marie Vieux-Chauvet

  • Published:
  • Aug 2009, 416 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Suppressed immediately upon publication in 1968 and finally released in France in 2005, this stunning trilogy, brilliantly introduced by Edwidge Danticat, is a scathing response to the powerful racial, sexual, and class struggles that rule Haiti.

In Love, three sisters entangle themselves in each other's love lives, creating a complicated family dynamic that echoes the growing chaos outside of the house. In Anger, the daughter of a middle-class family terrorized by paramilitaries agrees to prostitute herself to save the others, but the guilt that ensues upon the sale of her body and soul reveals the profound fissures among them. And finally, Madness paints a terrifying portrait of a Haitian town that has been ravaged by troops. A young poet, trapped in his house for days without food, becomes obsessed with the souls of the dead that surround him. Love, Anger, Madness is an extraordinary, brave, and searing evocation of a country in turmoil.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Often called a trilogy, Love, Anger, and Madness is actually a triptych of three thematically connected novellas. .... Despite its severe criticism of Haitian society, Love, Anger, and Madness is also very much a testament to a beloved country. Vieux-Chauvet’s tender and sympathetic descriptions of both the landscape and the people (on all sides of its complicated conflict) make this triptych a powerful emotional journey through a ravaged but well-loved landscape." - The Quarterly Conversation - Michelle Bailat-Jones

This information about Love, Anger, Madness was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Marie Vieux-Chauvet

Marie Vieux-Chauvet, a seminal writer of post-occupation Haiti, was born in Port-au-Prince in 1916 and died in New York in 1973. She is the author of five novels, including Dance on the Volcano, Fonds des Nègres, Fille d’Haiti, and Les Rapaces.

Rose-Myriam Réjouis and Val Vinokur have translated two novels by Patrick Chamoiseau, Solibo Magnificent and Texaco, the latter of which won the American Translators Association Galantière Prize for Best Book. Their translation of Love, Anger, Madness was supported by a Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

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