A native of Haiti, Dimitry Elias Léger makes his remarkable debut with this story of romance, politics, and religion that traces the fates of three lovers in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and the challenges they face readjusting to life after an earthquake devastates their city.
Reflecting the chaos of disaster and its aftermath, God Loves Haiti switches between time periods and locations, yet always moves closer to solving the driving mystery at its center: Will the artist Natasha Robert reunite with her one true love, the injured Alain Destiné, and live happily ever after? Warm and constantly surprising, told in the incandescent style of José Saramago and Roberto Bolaño, and reminiscent of Gabriel García Márquez's hauntingly beautiful Love in The Time of Cholera, God Loves Haiti is an homage to a lost time and city, and the people who embody it.
Front Jacket
"Léger deftly sketches his country's postcolonial struggles as well as its faith, resilience, and promise."--The New York Times Book Review
In thirty-five seconds, more than 200,000 people on the island of Haiti are killed and 1.3 million are left homeless. An earthquake has struck, ravaging a land that is plagued by poverty and poor infrastructure. Yet the amazing characters in God Loves Haiti are never simply victims.
At the heart of the novel are the connected but divergent fates of its President, his wife, and her lover. The world has fallen down around them, laying bare remorse, pain, isolation, and unalloyed grief now devastatingly realized, and irrevocably altering all their lives.
Anchoring this poignant and constantly surprising story is an affectionate portrait of Haiti, in all its complexity--its proud past as the first nation established by a successful slave revolt, its entangled politics with France and the United States, and its efforts to rise from the ruins to build anew.
"A luminous debut. . . . Léger writes beautifully and with an immense humanity. A standout novel."--Junot Díaz
--Edwidge DanticatBack Jacket
"Léger deftly sketches his country's postcolonial struggles as well as its faith, resilience, and promise."--The New York Times Book Review
In thirty-five seconds, more than 200,000 people on the island of Haiti are killed and 1.3 million are left homeless. An earthquake has struck, ravaging a land that is plagued by poverty and poor infrastructure. Yet the amazing characters in God Loves Haiti are never simply victims.
At the heart of the novel are the connected but divergent fates of its President, his wife, and her lover. The world has fallen down around them, laying bare remorse, pain, isolation, and unalloyed grief now devastatingly realized, and irrevocably altering all their lives.
Anchoring this poignant and constantly surprising story is an affectionate portrait of Haiti, in all its complexity--its proud past as the first nation established by a successful slave revolt, its entangled politics with France and the United States, and its efforts to rise from the ruins to build anew.
"A luminous debut. . . . Léger writes beautifully and with an immense humanity. A standout novel."--Junot Díaz
