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The Farming Of Bones

On sale

6th April 2000

Price: £11.99

Selected:  Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780349111636

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It is 1937, and Amabelle Desir is a young Haitian woman working as a maid for a wealthy family in the Dominican Republic, across the border from her homeland. The Republic, under the iron rule of the Generalissimo, treats the Haitians as second-class citizens, and although Amabelle feels a strong sense of loyalty to her employers, especially since her own parents drowned crossing the river from Haiti, racial tensions are heightened when Amabelle’s boss accidentally kills a Haitian in a car accident. The accident is a catalyst for a systematic round-up of Haitians, ostensibly for repatriation but in fact a prelude to slaughter. Amabelle, caught up in the chaos and confusion, returns to Haiti after much hardship to make a new life, but is for years uncertain of the fate of her lover, Sebastian, and haunted by a nagging sense of guilt.

A powerful, fiercely economical and deceptively moving work, blending historical accuracy with lyrical brilliance.

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Reviews

Fay Weldon, MAIL ON SUNDAY
Danticat delicately tiptoes through bougainvillaea and butterflies into minefields of rape, mayhem, insanity, suicide, terror.
INDEPENDENT
A first novel of precocious maturity
TIME OUT
Extraordinary
INDEPENDENT
A writer of great force with still more potential