Texaco
by Patrick Chamoiseau
A squatter community tells its story to the man sent to demolish it.
For you if
you want to understand Caribbean history through the people who built something from nothing and refused to leave
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Marie-Sophie Laborieux has spent her life building the community of Texaco on the outskirts of Fort-de-France — a shantytown of the dispossessed, named after the oil depot it borders. When an urban planner arrives to demolish it, she tells him the story of how it came to exist — her father's life under slavery's aftermath, the city's history, the community's survival. Chamoiseau writes in a Creole-inflected French that carries the rhythms of oral tradition. The most formally ambitious Martiniquais novel ever written. Won the Prix Goncourt. A dispatch about what people build when the official world has no place for them.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Martinique • Caribbean
- Voice
- Written by a Martiniquais author
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