Crossing the Mangrove

Do we really know who our neighbors are, who our friends are, what thoughts they keep to themselves, not to be shared with even their own family members?

Francis Sancher is found dead in the mud along the path to Riviere au Sel, but the story isn't about how he died or even if someone had killed him. His wake, attended by everyone in the village, both those who detested the man and the few who liked him, is the event during which each person is lost in his or her own thoughts, analyzing the decisions they made, significant events in their lives and how they met Francis.

Through the internal monologues, we're given a glimpse into the nature of Francis, a man who was complex, verbose, and yet secretive. In each of the internal monologues, show more there is a thread of sadness, some thicker than others, telling of dreams that have been set aside, hope that has been lost, children who are unloved and passions left unanswered.

All the personal stories are beautifully nuanced. They highlight the caste system that existed in Guadaloupe based on the color of one's skin and provide a richly detailed cultural journey into this part of the world. show less

Traversée de la mangrove borrows the classic literary conceit of the "mysterious stranger": an outsider arrives in a small, closed community and inadvertently releases all the tensions that have been smouldering in the place. In this case, it's a village called Rivière au Sel, hidden in dense forests on the slopes of Guadeloupe's volcano, La Grande Soufrière, and the story opens with the unexplained death of Francis Sancher, who had come to live in the village a few years earlier, no-one being quite sure where from. During an overnight wake, a succession of local people reflect on Sancher and the way he has affected their lives, and in the process tell us a great deal about how life in the village works, and how it is affected by show more class, gender and ethnicity.

Of course, Condé doesn't leave this literary convention in its standard form: she makes it clear that we are in the 1980s, and the village, remote as it is, does not exist in isolation. Everyone there has connections to the outside that define their lives in some way. They have come from somewhere else, they have been away to work or study and returned, they have close family in metropolitan France or abroad, they do business with the outside world, they have brought in a partner from elsewhere, etc. There is no such thing as an isolated village, and possibly there never was.

The portraits of the villagers don't in the end tell us a great deal about Sancher: we get a lot of snippets about him, but they don't add up to a simple closed narrative about him. It is the villagers themselves who turn out to be at the centre, and Condé has a lot of fun telling us about them in a whole series of different styles, sometimes funny, sometimes very moving, but always packed with fascinating detail. Towards the end, we get a chapter about the local intellectual, a young man (inevitably!) called Lucien, in which Condé neatly demolishes most of our preconceptions about "the Caribbean novel" and manages to poke fun at quite a few well-known figures, including herself. show less

It starts with a death; the mysterious stranger who came to the little Guadeloupan town years earlier is found dead, the entire town comes to his wake - his enemies, his mistresses, his friends - and all have their own image of him. It's not miles from Mahfouz's Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth in that way; the truth about a man nobody really knew is different for everyone. The question who killed him soon becomes so irrelevant that I find myself realising after I've put the book down that I forgot about looking for clues to his death, instead looking for clues to his life.

Of course, it's not about him, it's about the society he winds up in. Condé's sketch of Guadeloupe here won't win her any points with the tourist board, but it's show more beautifully complex, mixing the lingering effects of centuries of colonialism - both physical and mental, geographical and internal; the need to not be the one who gets dominated, whether on account of your skin or your gender, even if it means letting yourself be dominated in a manner of your own choosing. Etc. Condé switches POV and narration with every chapter, from the poetic to the harsh, and every time we see a new side of the supposed protagonist it seems to contradict the last one. She gives a multitude of voices to people who are (by others) supposed to be uniform, either in their négritude or their own disdain for it. One of those novels I find myself admiring more than I love it - it probably deserves a higher rating, but something about it frustrates me; I want to know more, I want to see more, I want those half-spoken things explored rather than swirled into a mystery that doesn't unpack itself. Maybe I should pick up Segu. show less

This is a story told with simple language, unrestrained emotion and a complex narrative structure, all based around the mutual cruelty and interdependence in a small island community. The mystery in the story and the metaphor of the tangled mangrove swamp work in thematic ways that reach far beyond the particulars of the book.

bra roman

En un poble al cor del bosc de l'illa antillana de Guadalupe, el veïnat vetlla un mort, un home arribat fa un temps i del qual ningú en sap gran cosa. Es cubá? Es un desertor? Perqué ha vingut a Guadalupe? Quins dimonis el persegueixen? Les respostes són confuses, peró la veritable identitat d'aquest home importa poc. A través de la imatge que els vilatans guarden d'ell, i dels canvis que ha provocat en les seves vides, Maryse Condé desplega una história que va molt més enllá del retrat de la petita comunitat de Riviére au Sel. El que pren forma a Travessa del manglar és el conjunt d'una societat i d'una identitat antillanes, amb els seus conflictes, les seves contradiccions i les seves tensions.
«Condé descriu els show more estralls del colonialisme i el caos postcolonial en un llenguatge que és, alhora, precís i aclaparador.» diu Ann Pålsson, Presidenta del jurat del Premi Nobel alternatiu. show less

Condé, van wie ik Ségou zo'n 20 jaar geleden heb gelezen, bracht in 1995 Tocht door de mangrove uit, dat een kaleidoscoop geeft van de ervaringen van bij de dodenwake voor Francis Sancher samengetrokken inwoners van Rivière au Sel op Guadeloupe. Sancher heeft een spookhuis geërfd dat, evenals zijn persoonlijkheid, aantrekkelijke en duistere kanten heeft. Menig dorpsbewoner is verleid, zwanger gemaakt, of heeft andere ervaringen door Sancher. Condé loopt hen als een soort ronde langs de rouwenden langs en beschrijft vol details en verfe het leven op het kleurrijke Guadeloupe. De invloeden van het hindoestaanse India, het christelijke Europa, de inheemse spiritistische bevolking, de verschuivingen van een Franse kolonie naar meer show more vrijheden, de geschiedenis van Cuba en de andere Antillen op de achtergrond, de Caribische sfeer is voelbaar aanwezig in deze roman. Zoals ze op p.180 laat vertellen: "Door de mangrove kun je geen tocht maken. Je blijft haken aan de scherpe mangrovewortels. Je zakt weg in de brakke modder." Die kracht lijkt ook van Rivière au Sel en Francis Sancher uit te gaan. show less