Masters of the Dew

I had never heard of this one, but this is a really good book. Set in Haiti, Manuel is a migrant worker returning from Cuba with ideas of how to improve the farming situation. The locals have in their need and ignorance (paraphrased from the book) cut down the trees keeping the topsoil in place and the water has pretty much dried up. Manuel, with his love Annaise, finds a water source, but a bloody family land dispute makes it difficult to convince everyone to take part in the scheme.

Gives you an insight into one of the reasons why Haiti is like it is today, with its colonial legacy.

Masters of the Dew is a socialist realist novel written in 1944 by the prominent Haitian communist Jacques Roumain. It follows the story of Manuel, who is returning to his Haitian village after years in Cuba, to find it poor, starving and feuding. He tries to unite the village to build a canal so that it can farm prosperously and harmoniously once more, but finds old hatreds, religious beliefs and scheming landlords blocking his way.
I enjoyed Masters of the Dew, but it was unrelenting in its political preaching and this did detract from the book. Every character becomes a cipher to illustrate a point about marxist politics and Haitian society, to the point that aspects of characterisation and narrative sometimes become squeezed in its show more political framework. This is, of course, an issue with any book trying to take on much bigger issues than are simply suggested by the story, and there are many examples that get the balance more badly wrong than Masters of the Dew. It is a quick, easy and interesting read, and worth a look if you get the chance. show less

This was lovely. It's so easy to see why it's the classic Haitian novel. It's going to be hard to choose just one excerpt to translate.

A beautiful, inspiring novel. Part fable, part biography of a land; part poetry, part sheer hard fact.