Jean-Claude FignolE's Quiet Dawn tells an enthralling story of Haiti's transition from French colony to independent Black republic. The swirling, multilayered novel provides intimate portraits of an eighteenth-century slaveholder, his wife, and their enslaved laborers set against the devastating backdrop of enslavement and revolution. Into this Gothic colonial tale FignolE interweaves a series of tragic events involving a present-day French nun doing penance for the sins of her ancestors. One of the few contemporary Haitian novels to explicitly grapple with Haiti's revolution, Quiet Dawn foregrounds issues of race, power, the continuing legacy of historical trauma, and the unresolved tensions between the past and present. Published in French in 1990 and appearing here in English for the first time, Quiet Dawn forcefully pushes against the silencing of Haiti's past, belying its title to depict a clamorous Atlantic world that comprises Europe, Africa, and the vast expanse of the Americas.
Jean-Claude FignolE (1941-2017) was a Haitian author, poet, cofounder of Haiti's Spiralist literary movement, and author of several novels in French. Laurent Dubois is John L. Nau III Bicentennial Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy at the University of Virginia. Kaiama L. Glover is Professor of African American Studies and French at Yale University.
Translators' Introduction / Kaiama L. Glover and Laurent Dubois ix Quiet Dawn 1
"From a virtuoso of Haitian literature comes this stunning whorl of history, revolution, love, and politics. With vivid authority, Jean-Claude FignolE offers an intriguing and painful saga of a colonial family moving through history, painting portraits of many of the towering figures from Haiti's colonial past. He situates a living, pulsing Haiti directly where it should be: at the axis of the twirling vortex of post-seventeenth-century Western history. It's a pleasure to read this book and a lesson, as well, about how we can interpret the legacy of the crowded Atlantic drama in our day." - Amy Wilentz, author of (Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti) "What good fortune to have Jean-Claude FignolE's unique voice brought before us at last in this masterpiece of translation by Kaiama L. Glover and Laurent Dubois. Sensual and moving, multivalent and dynamic, FignolE's Quiet Dawn takes on new life and, like Haiti itself, invites us to live through the 'fatality' of a unique 'history'-the gripping portrait of a place where, as the translators write, the 'past is literally everywhere all at once." - Colin Dayan, author of (Animal Quintet: A Southern Memoir)
