Guadeloupe (France) / All works
Novel · A way to begin
The Bridge of Beyond
Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle
Simone Schwarz-Bart · 1972
Synopsis
Télumée, a peasant woman of Guadeloupe, tells her life and that of the Lougandor women from whom she descends, from Minerve, her great-grandmother, who left the plantation after the abolition of slavery. Her mother, Victoire, entrusts her as a child to her grandmother Toussine, whom everyone calls Queen Without a Name, at Fond-Zombi. With her and with Man Cia, a sorceress, she learns the memory of slavery, and grows up alongside Élie, her childhood friend, who becomes her first love.
Context
The novel came out from Seuil in 1972 and received the following year the Grand prix des lectrices de Elle; it was reissued in paperback in the Points series. It follows four generations of women, from the freed slave to the narrator. Barbara Bray translated it into English as early as 1974, under the title The Bridge of Beyond, for Atheneum, in New York; this translation was reissued in 2013. Patrick Chamoiseau has hailed it as a book “never out of print and inexhaustible”.
Who it is for
For hearing peasant Guadeloupe through a woman who stands firm, and what grandmothers pass on.
Prizes and reception
Awarded a prize by the readers of Elle a year after its release, translated into English two years later, then reissued in paperback.
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