A Woman Named Solitude - by André Schwarz-Bart (Paperback)

About the Book

Like his previous book Last of the Just, which traced the Jewish experience of martyrdom, this book recreates through fact and myth people's enslavement, humiliation and survival.

Book Synopsis

Like André Schwarz-Bart's previous book, Last of the Just, which traced the Jewish experience of martyrdom, this book recreates through fact and myth people's enslavement, humiliation and survival.

Review Quotes

A Woman Named Solitude is a really brilliant conception of a black consciousness. . . . Schwarz-Bart recreates the slave experience as it must have seemed to the West Africans sold to white traders as tons of black flesh. . . . The chapters set in Africa seem to me the purest evocation of negritude by a white writer that I have read anywhere.-- "Saturday Review Syndicate"

A beautiful book, told in a dreamlike flow of images. . . . The work of a conscientious and gifted writer.-- "The New York Review of Books"

Although written in a deceptively uncontrived style, this very powerful book brilliantly telescopes history and conveys all the breadth of emotion of a good epic poem.-- "The New Yorker"

This book must be read to be believed. . . . Surely it shouldn't be possible to tell the tortures of slavery in the manner of a fairy tale and still convey the extent of the atrocity. . . . André Schwarz-Bart can, and does, make literature out of agony.-- "New York Times Book Review"

About the Author

Andre Schwarz-Bart is the author of The Last of the Just, which was awarded the Prix Goncourt.