Slave Old Man: A Novel
マルティニークのプランテーションから逃げ出した老いた奴隷と、彼を追う主人と猟犬の追跡を描く、濃密で詩的な中編小説。植民地支配の暴力を直視しながら、森の異様な生命力や神話的な語りを通して、自由への衝動と生の尊厳を浮かび上がらせる。
作品情報
逃走の先にあるのは自由だけではない。森そのものが、記憶と抵抗を語り始める。
『Slave Old Man』は、マルティニークの砂糖農園から逃げた老いた奴隷と、その主人、そして凶暴な猟犬の追跡劇を軸に、植民地支配が生んだ暴力の記憶をたどる。フランス語とクレオールの響きを生かした翻訳によって、森の圧倒的な存在感と、逃亡のなかで立ち上がる尊厳と恐怖が、ひとつの濃密な経験として読者に迫る。
レビュー要約
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詩的で幻惑的な文体と、歴史と寓話を重ねる構成が高く評価されている。読み手によっては、象徴性の強さや圧縮された分量を難しく感じることもある。
書籍情報
- 出版社
- The New Press
- 発売日
- 2018-05-01
- ページ数
- 176ページ
- 言語
- 英語
- サイズ
- 13.97 x 1.27 x 19.05 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781620972953
- ISBN-10
- 1620972956
- カテゴリ
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction/Historical
The "heart-stopping" ( The Millions ), "richly layered" ( Brooklyn Rail ), "haunting, beautiful" ( BuzzFeed ) story of an escaped captive and the killer hound that pursues him " Slave Old Man is a cloudburst of a novel, swift and compressed―but every page pulses, blood-warm. . . . The prose is so electrifyingly synesthetic that, on more than one occasion, I found myself stopping to rub my eyes in disbelief." ―Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Patrick Chamoiseau's Slave Old Man was published to accolades in hardcover in a brilliant translation by Linda Coverdale, winning the French-American Foundation Translation Prize and chosen as a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2018. Now in paperback, Slave Old Man is a gripping, profoundly unsettling story of an elderly enslaved person's daring escape into the wild from a plantation in Martinique, with his enslaver and a fearsome hound on his heels. We follow them into a lush rain forest where nature is beyond all human control: sinister, yet entrancing and even exhilarating, because the old man's flight to freedom will transform them all in truly astonishing―even otherworldly―ways, as the overwhelming physical presence of the forest reshapes reality and time itself. Chamoiseau's exquisitely rendered new novel is an adventure for all time, one that fearlessly portrays the demonic cruelties of the slave trade and its human costs in vivid, sometimes hallucinatory prose. Offering a loving and mischievous tribute to the Creole culture of early nineteenth-century Martinique, this novel takes us on a unique and moving journey into the heart of Caribbean history.
Born in Martinique, Patrick Chamoiseau is the author of Texaco , which won the Prix Goncourt and was a New York Times Notable Book, as well as Creole Folktakes and The Old Slave (The New Press), among other works.
レビュー
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Wonderful Translation
This Translation wanders back and forth between Allegory and History, with legend, imagination and fancy thrown in for entertainment. The 'stream of consciousness' is outstanding and as you immerse into the main character you become the 'Slave Old Man' and come to understand so much more about the plantation life in that time and place. Wonderful reading, great work of translation while keeping the messaging.
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Introduce yourself to Patrick Chamoiseau, if you haven't already.
Lovely writing. Seems to be an excellent translation. Reading it can be a very worthwhile use of one's time -- for the knowledge embedded in the story, for the thought-provoking insights, for the beauty of the language used and the descriptions presented. Although reading a library hard copy (lovely), I actually bought the kindle copy in order to share a passage with two young people trimming my trees one of the days I was reading it -- an inspirational and descriptive passage about the forest through which the slave was fleeing.
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Magical: A Linguistic tour de force
Chamoiseau's quest for identity in the mélange of cultures that make up the French Caribbean drives the author and this story. His search is exhilarating, a work in progress that brings him close to his destination, but with a way still to go. But for his efforts, however, those on a similar quest would find the going much harder. Be sure to read the "Translator's Afterword". It's masterful. It encouraged me to go back and start the book again to make sure I drew what I could from the story Afterword. In the fifth "Folio" [chapter], the narrative voice jumps from the third person to the first person in mid-paragraph. I am not sure what the author had in mind.My best guess: Chamoiseau is taking the slave story from the past to the present. Please leave me a comment telling me how you see it. Thanks.
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Captivating quick read.
This is a great book. I could not put it down until it was done. Every spare moment, I was reading this book. The symbolism is fantastic. The way things evolve is so interesting. The characters are real and draw you in. I highly recommend this book.
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Tough!
This is one of the toughest books I have read. The language and coordinations are hard to grasp. The old man was running, hallucinating about nature’s raw elements- these felt so surreal to read.
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