The Great Camouflage - by Suzanne Césaire (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A new and complete English translation

The Great Camouflage translates and assembles in one volume the seven articles Suzanne Césaire wrote for the cultural journal Tropiques. Césaire engages anthropology, esthetics, surrealism, history, and poetry as she grapples with questions of power and deception, self-deception, the economic slipknot of a post-slavery debt system, identity and inauthenticity, bad faith, psychological and affective aberration, and cultural zombification. All are caught in the web of "the great camouflage." The collection provides a multifaceted portrait of Césaire, and includes short writings from others who wrote passionately about her, including André Breton, André Masson, René Ménil, Daniel Maximin, and her husband Aimé Césaire and daughter, Ina Césaire.

Publication of this book is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Review Quotes

"[Cesaire's] writing bursts with intelligence, fervor and conviction. In her essays Leo Frobenius and the Problems of Civilizations, Alain and Esthetics, Andre Breton, Poet, and 1943: Surrealism and Us, she mobilizes anthropology, philosophy, and poetry to awaken global black consciousness, resistance, and liberation..."--Gabrielle Civil, Rain Taxi

"Provide[s] fascinating insights into [Césaire's] time and on this remarkable writer."--Jean Khalfa, Wasafiri

"The Great Camouflage is most welcome. Non-Francophones sorely needed to have access to Suzanne Césaire's writings, and the translating work of Keith L. Walker and editing by Daniel Maximin deliver."--Alex Gil, New West Indian Guide

"[Cesaire's] writing bursts with intelligence, fervor and conviction. In her essays "Leo Frobenius and the Problems of Civilizations, "Alain and Esthetics," "Andre Breton, Poet," and "1943: Surrealism and Us," she mobilizes anthropology, philosophy, and poetry to awaken global black consciousness, resistance, and liberation"--Gabrielle Civil, Rain Taxi

"Suzanne's first six essays flow seamlessly to her last, 'The Great Camouflage.' What she would have produced had she continued to write after 1945 or lived beyond the age of fifty, we will never know. But one thing is certain: Suzanne Césaire was a bright and shining light and a brilliant dissident for all time. The Great Camouflage is a spectacular achievement."--Tiffany Ruby Patterson, H-France Reviews

"This is the first work to translate Césaire's essays in their entirety and to collect them in a single volume. As such, it is a welcome addition to the study of early 20th century Francophone Caribbean women's writing. The translation is both eloquent and accurate, which is quite an accomplishment given the complexity of Césaire's writing."--Jennifer Wilks, author of Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism

"Keith Walker's translation of The Great Camouflage corrects the view that the Césaire legacy moves in a unilateral direction. A thinker in her own right, Suzanne Césaire was a key figure in that glittering constellation of theoreticians who gave form and shape to the idea of negritude." This volume of essays is a genuine treasure.""--Hortense Spillers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English, Vanderbilt University

About the Author

SUZANNE CÉSAIRE (1915 - 1966) was a French author from Martinique who along with her husband, Aimé Césaire, helped found the Négritude movement. DANIEL MAXIMIN is a Guadeloupean novelist, poet, and essayist. His most recent book is Les Fruits du cyclone: Une géopoétique de la Caraïbe. KEITH L. WALKER is a professor of French and Italian at Dartmouth College and author of Countermodernism and Francophone Literary Culture.