The Noose (also known as Pèlin-Tèt) focuses on the lives of two Haitian immigrants living in a grubby basement apartment in New York City in 1978. One, Polydor, is a middle-class intellectual and political refugee. The other, Pyram, is a lower-class laborer. For the sake of saving money, the two have been sharing the apartment for three years. While Pyram is away working, Polydor apparently does nothing but read books on political theory. His source of funds remains a mys...

Dézafi is no ordinary zombie novel. In the hands of the great Haitian author known simply as Frankétienne, zombification takes on a symbolic dimension that stands as a potent commentary on a country haunted by a history of slavery. Now this dynamic new translation brings this touchstone in Haitian literature—the first book ever published in Haitian Creole—to English-language readers for the first time.Written in a provocative experimental style, with a myriad of voices and...

What happens when the study of French is no longer coterminous with the study of France? French Civilization and Its Discontents explores the ways in which considerations of difference, especially colonialism, postcolonialism, and race, have shaped French culture and French studies in the modern era. Rejecting traditional assimilationist notions of French national identity, contributors to this groundbreaking volume demonstrate how literature, history, and other aspects of what is consider...