This is a radiant novel of fugitive life-of those who remain, in the face of terror, “catastrophically alive.” Coverdale renders Chamoiseau’s complex language beautifully into English, developing her own surprising strategy for Creole words, both translating them and leaving them in place. It’s not how long the old man is held in the water that matters, but what he will become. Language erupts here, and red crabs swarm.

It’s a well of utter passivity, where time stops, where the exhausted flesh gives up hope. The spring is a place of death and rebirth. They seem like the forest spring at the heart of the novel, where the old man, enslaved for as long as he can remember, tumbles in his flight from the master’s vicious mastiff (the molosse of the French title). Those two decades, during which Slave Old Man was not yet here, seem to me like a mysterious abyss. It was 1996 when Patrick Chamoiseau finished writing L’Esclave vieil homme et le molosse, 1997 when the novel was published, and 2018 when Linda Coverdale’s translation, Slave Old Man, appeared in English. S lave Old Man by Patrick Chamoiseau, translated from the French and Creole by Linda Coverdale (Martinique, New Press)

She teaches African literature, Arabic literature, and speculative fiction at James Madison University. Her work has received several awards, including the World Fantasy Award. Sofia Samatar is the author of the novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories, the short story collection, Tender, and Monster Portraits, a collaboration with her brother, the artist Del Samatar. Check in daily for new Why This Book Should Win posts covering all thirty-five titles longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards.

Slave old man patrick chamoiseau