Moonbath
Yanick Lahens author Emily Gogolak translator Russell Banks editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Deep Vellum Publishing
Published:19th Oct '17
Currently unavailable, our supplier has not provided us a restock date
Galleys mailing to all major review outlets as well as alternative review sources in November 2016 Author Russell Banks writing the introduction Blurbs targeting Ben Fountain (his next novel is set in Haiti and has already pledged a blurb and possibly a review) and Junot Diaz (similar mixture of the literary and the political in his work from the other side of the island that contains Haiti and Dominican Republic) Cultural Services of the French Embassy to sponsor the first author public appearances in the US planned for festivals, bookstores, and universities throughout in early fall 2016 First serial rights targeting The Paris Review, the New Yorker, McSweeney’s, the White Review; One Story, Guernica, Tin House Author publicity targeting interviews, essays, and more in the New York Times, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Vice, Rookie, Washington Post, etc. Print publicity targeting literary journals and newspaper book sections Promotion on LibraryThing, Goodreads, Riffle, and other social reading websites Promotion on the publisher's website (deepvellum.org), Twitter feed (@deepvellum), and Facebook page (/deepvellum) Promotion in the publisher’s e-newsletter Promotion at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference (AWP), Texas Book Festival, Brooklyn Book Festival, the American Literary Translators Association Conference, Book Expo America, Dallas Book Festival, and Bay Area Book Festival. Publicity targeting The New Inquiry, The Millions, Full-Stop, The Nervous Breakdown, HTMLGIANT, Three Percent, The Literary Saloon, the Quarterly Conversation, and more Print and digital advertising in select literary journals and magazines and on their websites, such as The American Reader, Granta, The Rumpus, The White Review, A Public Space, Little Star, The Coffin Factory, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Electric Literature, Music & Literature, and others
An award-winning, lyrically written, beautifully haunting saga of a Haitian family's fight against a curse spanning four generations.
Winner of the 2014 Prix Fémina & 2015 French Voices Award
After she is found washed up on shore, Cétoute Olmène Thérèse, bloody and bruised, recalls the circumstances that led her there. Her voice weaves hauntingly in and out of the narrative, as her story intertwines with those of three generations of women in her family, beginning with Olmène, her grandmother.
Olmène, barely sixteen, catches the eye of the cruel and powerful Tertulien Mésidor, despite the generations-long feud between their families which cast her ancestors into poverty. He promises her shoes, dresses, land, and children who will want for nothing…and five months after moving into her new home, she gives birth to a son. As the family struggles through political and economic turmoil, the narrative shifts between the voices of four women, their lives interwoven with magic and fraught equally with hope and despair, leading to Cétoute’s ultimate, tragic fate.
Yanick Lahens was born in Port-au-Prince in 1953 and is one of Haiti’s most prominent authors. She published her first novel in 2000, was awarded the prestigious Prix Femina in 2014 for Moonbath, and is the 2016 winner of a French Voices Award.
Winner of the Prix Femina, 2014 Winner of a French Voices Award, 2015 [Lahens] describes her country with a forceful beauty the destruction that befell it, political opportunism, families torn apart, and the spellbinding words of Haitian farmers who solely rely on subterranean powers.” Donyapress In the Haitian tradition of the rural novel [
] Yanick Lahens’ Moonbath establishes itself by its grand and lucid beauty.” Le Point Lahens’s ambitious fresco of twentieth-century Haiti through the eyes of peasants depicts the first generation with Romain-like incision.” Robert H. McCormick Jr, World Literature Today "Lahens is the most important living female Haitian author in French." Christiane Makward A novel of violent beauty.” Le Monde "One of the finest voices of Haitian contemporary literature." L’Ob’s "Everything is there, the content, powerful, and the style, poetic." Les Echos “A remarkable accomplishment.” —Asymptote “Yanick Lahens adeptly dipped her pen nib in tears to write Moonbath. She brandished her writing instrument with dexterity, creating Cétoute as a metaphor symbolizing both the pain and the promise of Haiti.” —Lanie Tankard, The Woven Tale Press “The novel’s mythic atmosphere is enhanced by Lahens’ meditations on personified nature, and Emily Gogolak’s translation preserves a bare and moving voice throughout.” —The Arkansas International “Power and corruption are ever present, and their pressures—be they sexual or economic or both—are often impossible to reckon with or escape. Though what’s most surprising is the sense that one has waded fully into the world these characters inhabit, a world so alive that I sometimes forgot I was reading a book at all. I’m reminded of first reading Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, a book that similarly transported me clean out of my self and into some other world beyond.” —Christian Kiefer, The Paris Review “An invigorating and necessary investigation of tradition, politics, loss, and history.” —Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan, Ploughshares “On every reread of this multigenerational Haitian novel I find more complexity and beauty in its pages.” —Cecilia Weddell, Associate Editor of Harvard Review Online
Winner of the Prix Femina, 2014 Winner of a French Voices Award, 2015 “A remarkable accomplishment.” — Asymptote “Yanick Lahens adeptly dipped her pen nib in tears to write Moonbath. She brandished her writing instrument with dexterity, creating Cétoute as a metaphor symbolizing both the pain and the promise of Haiti.” — Lanie Tankard, The Woven Tale Press “In the Haitian tradition of the rural novel […] Yanick Lahens’ Moonbath establishes itself by its grand and lucid beauty.” — Le Point “Lahens’s ambitious fresco of twentieth-century Haiti through the eyes of peasants depicts the first generation with Romain-like incision.” — Robert H. McCormick Jr, World Literature Today "Lahens is the most important living female Haitian author in French." — Christiane Makward “A novel of violent beauty.” — Le Monde “[Lahens] describes her country with a forceful beauty — the destruction that befell it, political opportunism, families torn apart, and the spellbinding words of Haitian farmers who solely rely on subterranean powers.” — Donyapress "One of the finest voices of Haitian contemporary literature." — L’Ob’s "Everything is there, the content, powerful, and the style, poetic." — Les Echos "The novel’s mythic atmosphere is enhanced by Lahens’ meditations on personified nature, and Emily Gogolak’s translation preserves a bare and moving voice throughout.” — The Arkansas International “Power and corruption are ever present, and their pressures—be they sexual or economic or both—are often impossible to reckon with or escape. Though what’s most surprising is the sense that one has waded fully into the world these characters inhabit, a world so alive that I sometimes forgot I was reading a book at all. I’m reminded of first reading Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, a book that similarly transported me clean out of my self and into some other world beyond.” - Christian Kiefer, The Paris Review “An invigorating and necessary investigation of tradition, politics, loss, and history.” - Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan, Ploughshares "on every reread of this multigenerational Haitian novel I find more complexity and beauty in its pages.”— Cecilia Weddell, Associate Editor of Harvard Review Online
ISBN: 9781941920565
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
216 pages