The Enigma of the Return

The Enigma of the Return

by David Homel (Translator), Dany Laferrière (Author)

Synopsis

Windsor Laferriere is an exiled Haitian writer, forced to flee his homeland as a political dissident. He has lived in Montreal for thirty-three years and now suffers from writer's block. His father of the same name has just died in New York, where he himself lived as an emigre for the fifty years. Windsor decides to travel to Haiti via New York to attend the funeral and inform his mother of the death. Leaving behind the freezing winter of Montreal - something he has never got used to - for the wet heat of Haiti, Windsor is faced with the grim truth of life in his homeland - the endemic poverty and starvation, the thwarted ambitions and broken dreams. But only here can he become a writer again...

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
Publisher: MacLehose Press
Published: 28 Feb 2013

ISBN 10: 0857050486
ISBN 13: 9780857050489
Prizes: Winner of Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal 2009 and Le Prix Medicis 2009.

Media Reviews
This magnificent meditation on loss and political exile looks set to become one of the great poetic statements of homesickness and return . . . I have not read such an affecting or humane book in years; it should be read by all exiles everywhere. -- Ian Thomson * Independent *
'This affecting novel investigates a man's relationship with the island he fled in his youth - Haiti - and the land in which he made a name for himself - Quebec. A meditation on loss and exile' Financial Times. * Financial Times *
'Moves fluidly between free verse and prose' Guardian. * Guardian *
'A poetic, melancholic tour de force ... a compelling, intense, stark and poignant exploration of living life as an outsider ... 'the great Haitian novel'' New Internationalist magazine. * New Internationalist magazine *
'In an age of great post-colonial migrations, this is a magnificent book' Gregoire Lemenager, Nouvel Observateur. * Nouvel Observateur *
'A richly haunting novel, with prose melting into poetry' Quentin Mills-Fenn, Uptown. * Uptown *
'A tour de force of partial autobiography' GQ magazine. * GQ magazine *
Author Bio
Dany Laferri re is a francophone Haitian and Canadian novelist and journalist. Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in Petit Go ve, Laferri re worked as a journalist in Haiti before moving to Canada in 1976. David Homel was born and raised in Chicago in 1952 of East European stock. He left at the end of the tumultuous 1960s and lived in Europe and Toronto before moving to Montreal in 1980.