The Color of Night (Vintage Contemporaries)

Annotation. Continuing his epic trilogy of the Haitian slave uprising, Madison Smartt Bell's Master of the Crossroads delivers a stunning portrayal of Toussaint Louverture, former slave, military genius and liberator of Haiti, and his struggle against the great European powers to free his people in the only successful slave revolution in history. At the outset, Toussaint is a second-tier general in the Spanish army, which is supporting the rebel slaves' fight against the French. But w hen Toussaint is betrayed by his former allies and the commanders of the Spanish army, he reunites his army with the French, wresting vital territories and manpower from Spanish control. With his army one among several factions, Toussaint eventually rises as the ultimate victor as he wards off his enemies to take control of the French colony and establish a new constitution. Bell's grand, multifaceted novel shows a nation, splintered by actions and in the throes of chaos, carried to liberation and justice through the undaunted tenacity of one incredible visionary. -- Cover

In this first installment of his epic Haitian trilogy, Madison Smartt Bell brings to life a decisive moment in the history of race, class, and colonialism. The slave uprising in Haiti was a momentous contribution to the tide of revolution that swept over the Western world at the end of the 1700s. A brutal rebellion that strove to overturn a vicious system of slavery, the uprising successfully transformed Haiti from a European colony to the world’s first Black republic. From the center of this horrific maelstrom, the heroic figure of Toussaint Louverture–a loyal, literate slave and both a devout Catholic and Vodouisant–emerges as the man who will take the merciless fires of violence and vengeance and forge a revolutionary war fueled by liberty and equality.

Bell assembles a kaleidoscopic portrait of this seminal movement through a tableau of characters that encompass black, white, male, female, rich, poor, free and enslaved. Pulsing with brilliant detail, All Soul’s Rising provides a visceral sense of the pain, terror, confusion, and triumph of revolution.

Publishers Weekly

In an astonishing novel of epic scope, Bell (Save Me, Joe Louis) follows the lives of a handful of characters from radically different social strata during the period of Haiti's struggle for independence. Nothing about that period was simple. In 1791, when the Caribbean island that native Amerindians called ``Hayti'' was divided between a Spanish colony in the east and the French colony of Saint Domingue, a slave revolt broke out in the French territory that claimed 12,000 lives in its first months. But the fighting wasn't only between black slaves and white owners; the colony had a Byzantine social structure that recognized 64 different ``shades'' of mulatto; of the half-million blacks in Saint Domingue, some 30,000 were free mulattos whose political interests often ran contrary to those of the slaves. The country's 40,000 whites were themselves divided over the outcome of the recent revolution in France. During the next 12 years, to increase their power bases, four racial/political groups-white royalists, white republicans, free mulattos and black slaves-formed and dissolved a string of unlikely alliances at a dizzying clip. Bell's principals here include a runaway slave looking for real freedom, the disturbed mistress of a razed sugar plantation and a royalist soldier in the embattled Cap Franais guard. Central to the narrative are Toussaint L'Ouverture, the enigmatic 51-year-old leader of the revolt, and Doctor Antoine Hbert, a Frenchman who shows up in Haiti just before the revolt breaks out. Hbert, who spends time as Toussaint's prisoner, falls for a freed mulatto. Warned by a young married Frenchwomen that ``Who marries a black woman becomes black,'' the physician is appalled, yet heeds the very words he dismisses. Toussaint, too, bears the mark of contradiction. He appears to be a simple, devout man, but he has ``learned a way to make his words march in more than one direction.'' A handful of chapters are set in 1802, when Toussaint is taken across the Atlantic as a prisoner. By omitting the middle of the revolutionary's story (during which he takes over Haiti, names himself governor-general and refuses to declare it independent), Bell astutely indicates that Toussaint, who saw himself as a noble warrior, was in fact motivated by a bizarre and self-defeating concept. By alluding to the end of the revolution only in a beautiful and haunting epilogue, moreover, Bell avoids the sense of victory that mars so many novels about revolution. Here at least, after more than 500 wrenching pages of rapes and massacres and fetuses impaled on pikes, there can be no question of a winner of the battle for Haitian liberation. Surviving it was feat enough. In Bell's hands, the chaos, marked by unspeakable acts of violence, that surrounds these characters somehow elucidates the nobility of even the most craven among them. (Oct.)

the Second Installment In His Spellbinding Trilogy, master Of The Crossroads Is An Extraordinary Look At The Haitian Revolution Of The 18th Century.

master Of The Crossroads Begins In 1794, When The Colony Of Saint Domingue, One Of France's Most Valuable Overseas Possessions, Was Considered To Be French Only By Name. A Bloody Revolt Of The Colony's African Slaves Had Been Raging Since 1791 And The French Population Was At War With Itself, Because The Wealthiest Property Owners--slaveowners Of Royalist Bent--had Invited An English Protectorate. While The French Revolutionaries Defended Themselves Against The English Invasion As Best They Could, The Mountainous, Inaccessible Interior Of The Country Was Traveled By Band Of Armed Blacks In Revolt Against Slavery. The Band Of Revolutionaries Was Being Led By A Notorious Black Military Leader, Who Proclaimed His Name To Be Toussaint L'ouverture.

Bell Writes Of Toussaint L'ouverture's Campaign In Stunning Detail, Incorporating Third-person Views Of The Revolutionary Leader From The Perspectives Of The Wide Range Of Men And Women Whose Paths He Crosses On The Culturally Diverse Island Of Haiti.

publishers Weekly

bell Manages The Bravura Feat Of Bringing Coherence And Novelistic Focus To The Intrinsically Complex History Of Haiti's National Liberator In This Second Installment In His Brutal, Sweeping Trilogy. The First Volume, All Souls' Rising, A National Book Award Finalist, Took The Slave Revolt In Haiti Up To 1793, When The Great Leader Toussaint Louverture Was Consolidating Power. Continuing His Stunning Historical Fresco, Bell Traces The Intricate Weave Of Toussaint's Campaigns With An Intelligence And Verve Reminiscent Of Shelby Foote's Classic Military Histories, Braiding His Rich Character Studies Into The Larger Scheme. Racial Classification Was A Science In Haiti In The 18th Century, And The Subtlest Variations In Skin Color Determined The Treatment Each Person Received. Riau, Toussaint's Godson, Is An Ex-slave. For Him, The Desire Of The White Planters To Reintroduce Slavery, And Their Fundamental Racism, Is Evident, But Riau's Hatred Doesn't Vitiate His Humanity. Riau Does Trust Toussaint's Secretary, A White Doctor, Antoine H Bert. A Subplot Running Like A Silver Thread In The Shadow Of The War Is H Bert's Quest For His Mulatto Mistress, Nanon, After She Runs Away From H Bert's Plantation With Choufleur, A Sadistic Mulatto Planter And Nanon's Former Lover, Who Exploits The Psychodynamics Of Slavery In A Frightening Erotic Context. The Faltering Planter Aristocracy Is Represented By Michel Arnaud, Who Returns To The Island Although His House And Lands Were Torched In The First Phase Of The Revolt. Arnaud's Past Is One Of Murderous Cruelty. Now, He Is Slowly Rehabilitating Himself, Thanks To Claudine, His Wife, Who Suffers From Possession By The Darkest Vodou Spirit, Baron Samedi. Bell Continually Integrates His History With The Sacred Vodou Landscape, And As Events Channel Between Crossroads, Trances, Dreams And Bloodshed, This Mesmerizing, Disturbing Saga Of A Half-forgotten War Takes On The Ominous Outlines And Biblical Proportions Of A Prophetic Vision. (oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

following The Widely Acclaimed All Souls’ Rising And Master Of The Crossroads, Madison Smartt Bell Gives Us The Climactic Final Chapter In The Life Of Toussaint Louverture, The Legendary Leader Of The Only Successful Slave Revolution In History.

in 1791, What Would Become Known As The Haitian Revolution Began As A Rebellion Of African Slaves Against Their White Masters In The French Colony Of Saint Domingue. By 1793 Toussaint Had Emerged As The Leader Of The Revolt, Proving Himself To Be As Adept At Politics As He Was On The Battlefield. By 1801 He Had Succeeded In Stabilizing The War-ravaged Territory And Invited Exiled White Planters, Whose Expertise Was Needed, To Return And Reclaim Their Properties. The Foundation Of A Society Based On Liberty, Genuine Equality, And Brotherhood Among Whites, Blacks, And Mulattos Seemed In Place. But The Proclamation Of A New Constitution That Abolished Slavery And Appointed Toussaint Governor For Life Incited Napoleon To Dispatch Troops In Order To Reestablish Control Over The Island.

the Stone That The Builder Refused Spans The Final Phase Of Toussaint’s Career And Paints An Astonish-ingly Detailed And Riveting Portrait Of A New Society Breaking Forth From The Chrysalis Of A Revolution, Of The Vision That Impelled Toussaint To Create A Society Based On Principle And Idealism, And Of The Dreadful Compromises He Was Forced To Make In Order To
preserve It.

a Masterly Weave Of The Factual And The Imagined, This Grand Culmination Of Bell’s Landmark Toussaint Louverture Trilogy Stands Alone As A Towering Achievement Of Historical Fiction.

the New York Times - Michael Pye

the Scale Alone Is Extraordinary. But Any Fool Can Write 2,000 Pages; That Just Takes Time. What Is Truly Impressive Is The Energy And Concentration, Right To The Very End. Almost Every Moment Is Full, Like Some Great Narrative Painting, Alive With The Detail That Puts You On The Road Or In The House Where Some Murder Or Meeting Is About To Happen. And Almost Every Moment Is Imagined Thoroughly … As Fiction, These Books Do What Novels Are Meant To Do: They Propose Their Own Vivid And Inexorable History.

At the end of the 1700s, French Saint Domingue was the richest and most brutal colony in the Western Hemisphere. A mere twelve years later, however, Haitian rebels had defeated the Spanish, British, and French and declared independence after the first—and only—successful slave revolt in history. Much of the success of the revolution must be credited to one man, Toussaint Louverture, a figure about whom surprisingly little is known. In this fascinating biography, Madison Smartt Bell, award-winning author of a trilogy of novels that investigate Haiti’s history, combines a novelist’s passion with a deep knowledge of the historical milieu that produced the man labeled a saint, a martyr, or a clever opportunist who instigated one of the most violent events in modern history.

The first biography in English in over sixty years of the man who led the Haitian Revolution, this is an engaging reexamination of the controversial, paradoxical leader.

The New York Times - Adam Hochschild

… this is the best biography of Toussaint yet, in large part because Bell does not shy away from the man's contradictions. Although a former slave, he had owned slaves himself. Although he led a great slave revolt, he was desperate to trade export crops for defense supplies and so imposed a militarized forced labor system that was slavery in all but name. He was simultaneously a devout Catholic, a Freemason and a secret practitioner of voodoo. And although the monarchs of Europe regarded him with unalloyed horror, he in effect turned himself into one of them by fashioning a constitution making himself his country's dictator for life, with the right to name his successor.

"With Master of the Crossroads, Bell brings to life the rise to power of the great Haitian military general Toussaint Louverture and the story of the only successful slave revolution in history.". "In chronicling Toussaint's victory and its aftermath, Bell gives us a kaleidoscopic portrait of this extraordinary figure as seen through the eyes of the men and women whose paths he crossed. English, French, Spanish, and African - the intersection of peoples who inhabited this war-torn island creates a rich social canvas against which the astonishing story of Toussaint Louverture - his beliefs, passions, and compulsions - unfolds over the course of nine tumultuous years."--BOOK JACKET. "Mae, a Las Vegas blackjack dealer, spends her free time wandering the desert with a rifle, or sitting in her trailer obsessively watching replays of an old lover escaping the wreckage of 9/11. What she sees in those images is different from what the rest of us would see. She revels in the pure anarchy, thrills at the destruction. These images recall memories of a childhood marked by unthinkable abuse, of her drift into a cult that committed the most shocking crime of the '60s, of her life since then as a feral and wary outsider, caught in a swirl of events at once personal, political, mythic"--Publisher description Mae, a blackjack dealer in a Las Vegas casino, spends her free time wandering the desert with a rifle, or sitting in her trailer obsessively watching replays of an old lover escaping the wreckage of 9/11. What she sees in those images is different from what the rest of us would see. She revels in the pure anarchy, thrills at the destruction. These images recall memories of a childhood marked by unthinkable abuse, of her drift into a cult that committed the most shocking crime of the '60s, of her life since then as a feral and wary outsider, caught in a swirl of events at once personal, political, mythic. Nathan Bedford Forrest was the most reviled and celebrated, loathed and legendary, of Civil War generals. We see Forrest off the battlefield, in the more hidden but no less telling moments of his life: wooing the woman who would become his wife; battling an addiction to gambling; overcoming his abhorrence of the bureaucracy of the army to rise to its highest ranks. We see him taking part in the business of slave trading, but treating his own slaves humanely. We see him with his slave mistress, with whom he fathered several children, and we see him reveal his gift for inspiring courage but not change The Stone that the Builder Refused is the final volume of Madison Smartt Bell's masterful trilogy about the Haitian Revolution–the first successful slave revolution in history–which begins with All Souls'Rising (a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award) and continues with Master of the Crossroads. Each of these three novels can be read independently of the two others; of the trilogy, The Baltimore Sun has said, “[It] will make an indelible mark on literary history–one worthy of occupying the same shelf as Tolstoy's War and Peace.” The Stone that the Builder Refused is the final volume of Madison Smartt Bells masterful trilogy about the Haitian Revolutionthe first successful slave revolution in historywhich begins with All Souls' Rising (a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award) and continues with Master of the Crossroads. Each of these three novels can be read independently of the two others; of the trilogy, The Baltimore Sun has said, [It] will make an indelible mark on literary historyone worthy of occupying the same shelf as Tolstoys War and Peace . One of the most prolific and gifted writers at work today presents an epic novel of astonishing depth and range about the black uprising in Haiti 200 years ago. A remarkable retelling of an episode of racial hatred at its most visceral and most unimaginably destructive, All Souls' Rising is Bell's most ambitious, most deeply satisfying novel to date.From the Hardcover edition. Fort de Joux, France, October 1802 I: Debakmen Fort de Joux, France, October 1802 II: Ravine à couleuvre Fort de Joux, France, October 1802 III: La Crête à Pierrot Fort de Joux, France, October 1803 IV: The roots of the tree Dessounen: Fort de Joux, France, April 1803 Weté Mò anba Dlo: Haiti, April 1825 Glossary Chronology of historical events Original letter & documents. The critically acclaimed author of All Souls' Rising provides a fictional account of the life and times of Toussaint Louverture, a gifted military and political leader who embarked on a campaign to free the slaves in late-eighteenth-century Haiti in the French colony of Saint Domingue. Reprint. 12,500 first printing. The 1791 revolt against the French in Haiti through the eyes of the parties in the conflict: mulattoes, blacks and whites. The protagonists include its tragic leader, the aristocratic Toussaint L'Ouverture who refused to declare independence from France. A tale of burning plantations, massacres and Byzantine politics Portrays Toussaint L'ouverture's final treacherous, brutal battles with the French in late 1801. Weaves a great web of covert actions, love affairs, betrayals, massacres, miraculous rescues, and otherworldly interventions until Toussaint ends up in a frigid cell the the French Alps Presents a biography of Toussaint Louverture that captures the frequently contradictory and complex life of the leader of the late-eighteenth-century Haitian Revolution that became the only successful slave revolt in history