translated from the French (Haiti) by Aidan Rooney
This is the first novel I have read from Haiti in translation by a woman, and it’s a cracker.
Célia Jérôme, or Cécé, is a destitute young woman in Haiti’s gang-ridden Cité of Divine Power, a ‘lost corner of a lost country, a boil on the lip of a sick nation.’
Cécé lives with her alcoholic uncle and manages to keep her head above water by ‘entertaining’ various men, though it is evident that she dislikes the work and has run down her number of clients. Like many of her peers, she spends much of her time on social media, where she is Cécé la Flamme, but unlike her friends, her posts attract tens of thousands of followers. She began like many, with pictures of friends and food, but finds soon that it is the more gruesome photos she takes that attract the real attention; ‘the gullies in the Cité, the dead bodies I came across on the street,’ and, she explains. ‘Dead bodies did very well.’
She becomes an influencer, and that attracts the attention of the gang leaders who want the access she has to so many people.
This can be read as a parable about the perils of influencer culture, as Cécé inevitably clashes with the people who pay her to support them, or as those supporters meet their demise, as they frequently do.
But this is a macabre nove, and it is at its best when dealing with the consequences of a young woman’s relentless abuse, Prophète’s writing captures Cécé’s desensitisation to the violence around her, and yet it is rich in observational detail, particularly strong on location, a place ravaged by not only gang warfare, but devastating natural tragedies also.
Though the violence is frequently brutal, Prophète is looking for something more, the brutality is bound together with Cécé’s character, and the reader is forced to witness her slow erosion.
One of the novels of the year.
My GoodReads score 5 / 5
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