My Heart Beats Fast - Paperback

Situated in contemporary Martinique, My Heart Beats Fast centers Kim, a young man accused of murdering his father, his sister's partner, and her young son. The narration braids three temporalities: the present of the trial; the recent past of Kim's youth shaped by Martinique's entanglement with late-stage capitalism and/as neocolonialism; and a longer duration that stretches back to slavery and the plantation, where Kim's Antillean matrilineal origins have their roots. This nonlinear narrative makes generous use of analepses, as the spirits of the ancestors whisper visions and memories to Kim's sister Edith, who attempts to understand what led her brother to commit such a horrific act. In addition to blending elements of realism and the marvelous, My Heart Beats Fast is written in a particularly poetic, urgent yet precise prose that has earned Nadia Chonville many accolades.