Novel
General Sun, My Brother
Compère Général Soleil
Jacques Stephen Alexis · 1955
Synopsis
Hilarion Hilarius, a destitute young man of Port-au-Prince, steals to eat; the police catch him and beat him black and blue. In prison, he meets a communist activist, Pierre Roumel, who awakens him to political awareness. Once released, he finds work in a factory and marries Claire-Heureuse, who bears him a son, Désiré, then the couple leave the slums of the capital for the cane fields of the Dominican Republic, under the Trujillo dictatorship.
Context
The book appeared at Gallimard in 1955; Raymond Queneau was its first reader, and it came close to the Prix Goncourt. Hugues Saint-Fort, on Potomitan, sees in it the massacre of Haitians ordered in 1937 by Trujillo as a central episode. Gallimard reissued it in 1982 in the L'Imaginaire series, with a preface by Florence Alexis. It appeared in Spanish as early as 1957 in Buenos Aires, under the title Mi compadre el general Sol, and Carrol F. Coates translated it into English in 1999.
Who it is for
A novel in French of about three hundred and fifty pages, reissued in paperback; it can also be read in Spanish and in English.
Prizes and reception
It is said to have come close to the Prix Goncourt and is regarded as the most famous of its author's novels.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.