Sweet Undoings

Serialization outreach targeting Granta, Paris Review, Astra Magazine, BOMB, n+1, Electric Literature, Literary Hub National review and feature outreach to print publications (NYTBR, New York Times, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, LA Times, Boston Globe) and online (NPR, Literary Hub, Buzzfeed, The Millions) Targeted outreach to publications spotlighting translated literature: World Literature Today, Asymptote, Words Without Borders, EuropeNow Virtual events featuring author and translator; Promotion at/events pitched to PEN World Voices Festival Promotion on the publisher’s website (deepvellum.org), Twitter feed (@deepvellum), and Facebook page (/deepvellum); publisher’s e-newsletter to booksellers, reviewers, librarians

Yanick Lahens leads us into a breathless intrigue with her newest portrait of Haiti, Sweet Undoings.

In Port-au-Prince, violence never consumes. It finds its counterpart in a "high-pitched sweetness", a sweetness that overwhelms Francis, a French journalist, one evening at the Corossol Restaurant-Bar, when the broken, rich voice of lounge singer Brune rises from the microphone.

Brune's father, Judge Berthier, was assassinated, guilty of maintaining integrity in a city where everything is bought. Six months after this disappearance, Brune wholly refuses to come to terms with what happened. Her uncle Pierre, a gay man who spent his youth abroad to avoid persecution, refuses to give up on solving this unpunished crime.

Alongside Brune and Pierre, Francis becomes acquainted with myriad other voices of Port-au-Prince, including Ézèchiel, a poet desperate to escape his miserable neighborhood; Waner, a diligent pacifist; and Ronny the American, at ease in Haiti as in a second homeland.

Drawing its power from the bowels of the city, Sweet Undoings moves with a rapid, electric syncopation, gradually and tenderly revealing the richness of the lives within.