The Dew Breaker
A short-story collection by a Haitian American writer that portrays lives marked by violence and loss. Across the stories, it illuminates fracture and the possibility of survival.
Work Information
A story collection confronting violence and loss.
The collection links fragments of lives marked by violence and loss. Each story stands alone, yet together they create a powerful emotional landscape.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Published
- 2004-03-09
- Pages
- 256 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 14.94 x 2.36 x 22.02 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781400041145
- ISBN-10
- 1400041147
- Price
- 3342 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Literary
From the universally acclaimed author of Breath, Eyes, Memory and Krik? Krak!, a brilliant, deeply moving work of fiction that explores the world of a “dew breaker”—a torturer—a man whose brutal crimes in the country of his birth lie hidden beneath his new American reality. We meet him late in his life. He is a quiet man, a husband and father, a hardworking barber, a kindly landlord to the men who live in a basement apartment in his home. He is a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, recognizable by the terrifying scar on his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him: his devoted wife and rebellious daughter; his sometimes unsuspecting, sometimes apprehensive neighbors, tenants, and clients. And we meet some of his victims. In the book’s powerful denouement, we return to the Haiti of the dew breaker’s past, to his last, desperate act of violence, and to his first encounter with the woman who will offer him a form of redemption—albeit imperfect—that will change him forever. The Dew Breaker is a book of interconnected lives—a book of love, remorse, and hope; of rebellions both personal and political; of the compromises we often make in order to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. Unforgettable, deeply resonant, The Dew Breaker proves once more that in Edwidge Danticat we have a major American writer.
Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti and moved to the United States when she was twelve. She is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; and The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner. She is also the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures .
Reviews
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A terrific story
The Dew Breaker is a very educational book with unique contradictions in the characters in the story. This is a story about the haunting tale of a man who left Haiti for New York, and still could not leave behind his memory of victimizing. I enjoyed this book to the very end. I recommend it along with DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE, DISGRACE, THE USURPER AND OTHER STORIES, THE UNION MOUJIK
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I needed the book for an English course, the shipping was prompt and the price was great (got it used). Maybe not the most interesting, but I'm satisfied with my purchase.
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The cycle of nine stories that make up "The Dew Breaker" revolves around the central character that haunts all of them: a loving father and husband living in New York who was once a member of the Tontons Macoute, paramilitary torturers during Francois Duvalier's despotic regime in Haiti. Only three of the stories deal directly with this man and his family, but the other six deal with his victims, their families, or their friends. Although I often feel that stories-as-a-novel (or fix-ups) are not convincing--the distraction of the seams can sometimes overpower the whole--this is an exception: if anything, the jigsaw-puzzle approach more powerfully shows how disparate lives have been shattered by one "evil" man. It's a heavy topic, and much of the book is melancholy and even gloomy--but Danticat is expert at throwing in both comic relief and the perfectly placed awkward moment. All nine stories are superb, but even so there are four the truly stand out. The opening story, "The Book of the Dead," describes a semi-vacation trip to Florida taken by the now-elderly man and his daughter, Ka, who has sold a sculpture based her father's image to a famous Haitian American actress. When the father (with the artwork) disappears, secrets are revealed, Ka's adoration of her father is tested, and the obligatory meeting with the actress is both uncomfortable and unforgettable. In "Seven," an immigrant living with two bachelors in a basement apartment gets ready to receive the wife he hasn't seen in seven years. (One of his initial concerns: his apartment-mates need to stop sitting around in their underwear.) My favorite section, "The Bridal Seamstress," features Aline, a young, idealistic journalism intern who interviews a woman who is about to retire from a career making bridal dresses for other Haitian immigrants ("they come here carrying photographs of tall, skinny girls in dresses that cost thousands of dollars. . . . It's part of my job to tell them, without making them cry, that they're too short, too wide, or too pregnant . . ."). The story turns darker when the older woman describes the new neighbor who, she claims, is the man who tortured her in Haiti. And, the longest and final story, "The Dew Breaker," takes us back to 1967, when the man who will be the cause of so many future nightmares conducts his last murderous assignment in Haiti, and then takes us forward to 2004, with the story of the woman who saved, forgave, and (if such a thing is possible) redeemed him.
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This book is really good. I had to read it for one of modules this year and I enjoyed it far more than I was expecting I would. It's a fascinating and compelling narrative about an aspect of history that is not talked about enough. I loved the format of interconnecting short stories that don't tell the reader everything and allow us to build our own connections and get surprised as we read on.
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I have not read the book, BUT I will read it in the future as a book club selection. The product had a good photo alongside its description. As always, the purchase went smoothly.
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Simply but beautifully written, the story of Haiti over two generations seen in flashbacks through various characters' eyes. A truly magnificent achievement.