Andre Schwarz Bart - La Mulatresse Solitude

From the epilogue to "A Woman Named Solitude" by Andre Schwarz-Bart 

If the traveler insists, he will be permitted to visit the remains of the old Danglemont plantation. The guard will wave his hand, and as though by magic a tattered black field worker will appear. He will greet the lover of old stones with a vaguely incredulous look, and they will start off.…[T]hey will stroll this way and that and ultimately come to a remnant of knee-high wall and a mound of earth intermingled with bone splinters.…Conscious of a faint taste of ashes, the visitor will take a few steps at random, tracing wider and wider circles around the site of the mansion. His foot will collide with one of the building stones, concealed by dead leaves, which were dispersed by the explosion and then over the years buried, dug up, covered over, and dug up again by the innocent hoes of the field workers. If he is in the mood to salute a memory, his imagination will people the environing space, and human figures will rise up around him, just as the phantoms that wander about the humiliated ruins of the Warsaw ghetto are said to rise up before the eyes of other travelers.

critics say it is a valiant but decidedly western glance at our history - particularly the detail of making the heroine a "walking dead" a spirit rather than a living and breathing soldier. We are recommended instead TEXACO by Chamoiseau.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/sdn/summary/v040/40.1-2.rothberg.html

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Mul%C3%A2tresse_Solitude_%28roman%29

http://www.biblioblog.fr/post/2009/02/03/La-mulatresse-Solitude-Andre-Schwarz-Bart

www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/schwarz-bart_andre.html

http://afiavi.free.fr/e_magazine/spip.php?article1867

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