Product Description

"Chamoiseau is a writer who has the sophistication of the modern novelist, and it is from that position (as an heir of Joyce and Kafka) that he holds out his hand to the oral prehistory of literature."
--Milan Kundera

Of black Martinican provenance, Patrick Chamoiseau gives us Texaco (winner of the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize), an international literary achievement, tracing one hundred and fifty years of post-slavery Caribbean history: a novel that is as much about self-affirmation engendered by memory as it is about a quest for the adequacy of its own form.

In a narrative composed of short sequences, each recounting episodes or developments of moment, and interspersed with extracts from fictive notebooks and from statements by an urban planner, Marie-Sophie Laborieux, the saucy, aging daughter of a slave affranchised by his master, tells the story of the tormented foundation of her people's identity. The shantytown established by Marie-Sophie is menaced from without by hostile landowners and from within by the volatility of its own provisional state. Hers is a brilliant polyphonic rendering of individual stories informed by rhythmic orality and subversive humor that shape a collective experience.

A joyous affirmation of literature that brings to mind Boccaccio, La Fontaine, Lewis Carroll, Montaigne, Rabelais, and Joyce, Texaco is a work of rare power and ambition, a masterpiece.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139216 in Books
• Published on: 1998-02-24
• Released on: 1998-02-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.com Review
In Texaco, Patrick Chamoiseau is not scared of reimagining history in order to illuminate an essential truth about his homeland, Martinique. Through his narrator, Marie-Sophie Laborieux, a daughter of slaves, he chronicles 150 years in the history of Martinique, starting with the birth of Marie-Sophie's beloved father, Esternome, on a sugar plantation sometime in the early 19th century. It ends with her founding Texaco, a shanty town built on the grounds of an old oil refinery on the outskirts of Fort-de-France. What happens in-between is an astounding flight of imagination and language that rivals the works of Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Chamoiseau begins in the present with the arrival of an urban planner, whom the residents of Texaco mistake for Christ. It then spins back in time to the birth of Esternome and the death of his father, who was suspected of witchcraft by a white plantation owner. In myriad short sequences, the novel follows Esternome's progress as he is first freed by his master, then drawn away from the plantation by the lure of St. Pierre--"City" in the minds of the disenfranchised black population of Martinique. He is eventually washed up on the outskirts of Fort-de-France, which becomes "City" after St. Pierre is destroyed by a volcanic eruption. With the birth of Marie-Sophie, Chamoiseau takes the reader into the present century--through two world wars, riots, famine, political turmoil. The tension always simmers between "City," a metaphor for France, and the countryside where black Martinique's collective consciousness resides.

From Publishers Weekly
A teeming jungle of a book, this novel brilliantly mixes historical events, Creole fables, snatches of poetry and satiric arias?as well as the French and Creole languages?into a polyphonous Caribbean epic. Chamoiseau (Creole Folktales) traces the migrations of black slaves and mulattos throughout Martinique's history. The novel takes its title from the oil company, whose local refinery eventually becomes synonymous with the nearby shantytown where a community of dispossessed Creoles have settled. Their search for home?and for their own identity?begins in the 19th century, with a freed slave named Esternome Laborieux ("the hardworking"), and continues with his daughter, Marie-Sophie, the founder of the shantytown. The narrative sprawls across time: the abolition of slavery in 1848 and the decay of the plantation system; the WWII Vichy regime; de Gaulle's 1964 visit; the postcolonial era. Alongside these historical touchstones tag the ordinary stories of travel, love and death in a boisterous "Vide" (Mardi Gras parade) of vivid characters. Chamoiseau's ornate prose is maximalist and then some. Esternome discovers, with the help of a Creole shaman, that his destiny is "to unravel [the whites'] History into our thousand stories." Structurally and spiritually, the novel has much in common with Eduardo Galeano's Memory of Fire trilogy, as Chamoiseau pastes together bits of fact and fiction with the glue of fabulism. In the end, his mythic Texaco?a realm that straddles the city and countryside, bondage and freedom?is firmly located in both history and the imagination. (Feb.) FYI: Texaco won the 1992 Prix Goncourt, France's highest literary prize.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Winner of the Prix Goncourt (France's highest literary prize), Chamoiseau's third novel is a tour de force set on the Caribbean island of Martinique. Marie-Sophie narrates the story of her slave ancestors and her life leading up to the founding of "Texaco," a city of hutches on the grounds of the Texaco tanks along the island's coast. She tells her story of struggle and love to an urban planner, convincing him to let the city stand and, he confesses, "awakening the poet in him." Marie-Sophie's story conveys the power of women, story, and place. It champions multiculturalism, storytelling, and reversing the ills of modern cities. Retelling her story and excerpting from notebooks by her and the urban planner is Chamoiseau's stand-in, "the Word Scratcher." Like a Caribbean island, the language is lush and colorful, the metaphors and plots thick and tangled, and the pace leisurely even while exciting. The book commands a reader's full attention. Kevin Grandfield

Customer Reviews

Excellent! Pure Oiseu de Cham!
It took me a little while to get into the rhythm of this book...I had just recently finished reading another book with a more linear storyline, but I kept at it and was rewarded with a wonderful, highly nuanced, passionate, and an ultimately funny story told by Marie-Sophie, Texaco's protector. Texaco, the place, is the heartbeat of the Creole nation of Martinique. Texaco, the book is peppered with ideas that are more eloquently described by Creole words or phrases. Chamoiseau is a brilliant writer who for me recalls Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Umberto Eco. I highly enjoy his work.

Beautifully writted and translated mosaic
Chamioseau has written a beautifully compelling novel that traces the sources of conflict and conciliation among the peoples of Martinique through the experiences over two centuries of a father and daughter. Told largely through the eyes of Marie-Sophie, the daughter, the book traces the emergence of Martinican society through her experiences and those of her father, Esternome, within, without, above, below, beyond and through all elements of the island culture. Marie-Sophie and Esternome live and brush against the lives of each of the contributing elements of modern Martinican society -- plantation slaves, maroon escapees, free blacks, Creoles, poor white underclass, and white "beke" aristocracy. Each tile of this mosaic is lovingly painted, whether it displays steadfast endurance, sexual bliss, or stubborn cruelty. Each section can be surprising as displayed under a different light. Viewed as a whole, the glory of the complete work surpasses, but can not be distingushed from, the sum of its parts. Chamoiseau thus demonstrates that the Martinican civilization is itself the harmonious sum of seemingly dissonant parts. Collective history is made up of individual stories -- some profound, some profane. The stories -- the lives -- of the strugglers, the stragglers can not be ignored. Their lives are the history, the essence, the being of the island. They must not be bulldozed into oblivion. Texaco must survive.

Oiseau de Cham sings of New History
From beginning to end, Chamoiseau provides a delightful yet difficult read. This challenging text is not for the faint of heart for it pushes the reader to read contrapuntally, against the grain; in fact, one is not so much reading as listening. A brilliant translation of the French captures this challenge. The prose is startingly original, and the turns of phrase will spark devotion.

The reader is asked to trace the history of Sophie Laborieux as she labors to carve a space for herself in a History that will not hear her. Texaco represent the dangers in all post-imperial nations not only external, as the title suggests, but also internal, the loss of imagination, creativity, heterodoxy. What emerges, in short, is a personal yet univeral narrative, one that bridges the gap between story telling and history making.

This text aligns itself with other notable works by Amin Maalouf, Salman Rushdie, and Ben Okri.