Texaco (edit title)

Shelfari edited the description of Texaco Saturday, August 1 2009.

• "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.

Shelfari edited the contributors of Texaco Sunday, July 26 2009.

• Added a contributor: Patrick Chamoiseau: (Primary Author)
• Added a contributor: Rose-Myriam Rejouis: (Primary None)
• Added a contributor: Val Vinokurov: (Primary None)

Shelfari edited the first sentence of Texaco Friday, July 17 2009.

• Upon his entrance into Texaco, the Christ was hit by a stone-an aggression that surprised no one.