Background
Patrick Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953, in Fort-de-France, Martinique, France. He is the son of George Chamoiseau, a postal worker, and Emile Chamoiseau, a cuisinier.
Prix Goncourt
(During carnival time in Martinique, a storyteller falls v...)
During carnival time in Martinique, a storyteller falls victim to a transitory underworld on the edge of oblivion
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679432361/?tag=2022091-20
1988
("Chamoiseau is a writer who has the sophistication of the...)
"Chamoiseau is a writer who has the sophistication of the modern novelist, 0and it is from that position (as an heir of Joyce and Kafka) that he holds out his hand to the oral prehistory of literature." --Milan Kundera Of black Martinican provenance, Patrick Chamoiseau gives us Texaco (winner of the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary prize), an international literary achievement, tracing one hundred and fifty years of post-slavery Caribbean history: a novel that is as much about self-affirmation engendered by memory as it is about a quest for the adequacy of its own form. In a narrative composed of short sequences, each recounting episodes or developments of moment, and interspersed with extracts from fictive notebooks and from statements by an urban planner, Marie-Sophie Laborieux, the saucy, aging daughter of a slave affranchised by his master, tells the story of the tormented foundation of her people's identity. The shantytown established by Marie-Sophie is menaced from without by hostile landowners and from within by the volatility of its own provisional state. Hers is a brilliant polyphonic rendering of individual stories informed by rhythmic orality and subversive humor that shape a collective experience. A joyous affirmation of literature that brings to mind Boccaccio, La Fontaine, Lewis Carroll, Montaigne, Rabelais, and Joyce, Texaco is a work of rare power and ambition, a masterpiece.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679432353/?tag=2022091-20
1992
(School Days (Chemin-d’Ecole) is a captivating narrative b...)
School Days (Chemin-d’Ecole) is a captivating narrative based on Patrick Chamoiseau’s childhood in Fort-de-France, Martinique. It is a revelatory account of the colonial world that shaped one of the liveliest and most creative voices in French and Caribbean literature today. Through the eyes of the boy Chamoiseau, we meet his severe, Francophile teacher, a man intent upon banishing all remnants of Creole from his students’ speech. This domineering man is succeeded by an equally autocratic teacher, an Africanist and proponent of “Negritude.” Along the way we are also introduced to Big Bellybutton, the class scapegoat, whose tales of Creole heroes and heroines, magic, zombies, and fantastic animals provide a fertile contrast to the imported French fairy tales told in school. In prose punctuated by Creolisms and ribald humor, Chamoiseau infuses the universal terrors, joys, and disappointments of a child’s early school days with the unique experiences of a Creole boy forced to confront the dominant culture in a colonial school. School Days mixes understanding with laughter, knowledge with entertainment—in ways that will fascinate and delight readers of all ages. School Days (Chemin-d’Ecole) is a captivating narrative based on Patrick Chamoiseau’s childhood in Fort-de-France, Martinique. It is a revelatory account of the colonial world that shaped one of the liveliest and most creative voices in French and Caribbean literature today. Through the eyes of the boy Chamoiseau, we meet his severe, Francophile teacher, a man intent upon banishing all remnants of Creole from his students’ speech. This domineering man is succeeded by an equally autocratic teacher, an Africanist and proponent of “Negritude.” Along the way we are also introduced to Big Bellybutton, the class scapegoat, whose tales of Creole heroes and heroines, magic, zombies, and fantastic animals provide a fertile contrast to the imported French fairy tales told in school. In prose punctuated by Creolisms and ribald humor, Chamoiseau infuses the universal terrors, joys, and disappointments of a child’s early school days with the unique experiences of a Creole boy forced to confront the dominant culture in a colonial school. School Days mixes understanding with laughter, knowledge with entertainment—in ways that will fascinate and delight readers of all ages.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0803214774/?tag=2022091-20
1994
(Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows traces the rise and fall o...)
Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows traces the rise and fall of Pipi Soleil, “king of the wheelbarrow” at the vegetable market of Fort-de-France, in a tale as lively and magical as the marketplace itself. In a Martinique where creatures from folklore walk the land and cultural traditions cling tenuously to life, Patrick Chamoiseau’s characters confront the crippling heritage of colonialism and the overwhelming advance of modernization with touching dignity, hilarious resourcefulness, and truly courageous joie de vivre. Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows traces the rise and fall of Pipi Soleil, “king of the wheelbarrow” at the vegetable market of Fort-de-France, in a tale as lively and magical as the marketplace itself. In a Martinique where creatures from folklore walk the land and cultural traditions cling tenuously to life, Patrick Chamoiseau’s characters confront the crippling heritage of colonialism and the overwhelming advance of modernization with touching dignity, hilarious resourcefulness, and truly courageous joie de vivre.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0803214952/?tag=2022091-20
1999
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0744QQX2M/?tag=2022091-20
(A spicy mix of folktales from the author's childhood in M...)
A spicy mix of folktales from the author's childhood in Martinique includes cheeky urchins, wicked hags, deceitful suitors, and ravenous devils, and reflects the struggle of slaves in a colonized land and a longing for the simple joys in life.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1565841859/?tag=2022091-20
(Cultural Writing. Folklore. Carribbean Studies. Translate...)
Cultural Writing. Folklore. Carribbean Studies. Translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti. Intoxicating in its language, lush in its evocation of Creole island culture, SEVEN DREAMS OF ELMIRA: A TALE OF MARTINIQUE is a vivid and hallucinatory fable, written by widely acclaimed author Patrick Chamoiseau and illustrated with stunning photographic portraits by Jean Luc-Laguardigue. Based on interviews, observation, and invention, this story takes as its canvas the everyday lives of the workers at the old St. Etienne rum distillery in the hills of Martinique, and the strange vision of the beautiful Elmira who appears to a select few.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1581950020/?tag=2022091-20
(Using the playful, orally inspired, and partially invente...)
Using the playful, orally inspired, and partially invented language for which he is renowned, Patrick Chamoiseau recalls the brilliant, magical universe of his early childhood in Martinique. At the center of this universe is his extraordinarily vigorous mother and her creative, pragmatic ways of coping with poverty and five children. As Chamoiseau presents these first impressions of an exceptional child growing up in a rich Creole culture, he also reflects in oblique but incisive ways on colonialism. He probes the boundary between reality and imagination, between the child’s awakening understanding and the adult’s memory of those earlier days. Using the playful, orally inspired, and partially invented language for which he is renowned, Patrick Chamoiseau recalls the brilliant, magical universe of his early childhood in Martinique. At the center of this universe is his extraordinarily vigorous mother and her creative, pragmatic ways of coping with poverty and five children. As Chamoiseau presents these first impressions of an exceptional child growing up in a rich Creole culture, he also reflects in oblique but incisive ways on colonialism. He probes the boundary between reality and imagination, between the child’s awakening understanding and the adult’s memory of those earlier days.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0803214871/?tag=2022091-20
(Drawn from a harsh world of slavery, sugar plantations an...)
Drawn from a harsh world of slavery, sugar plantations and hunger, this collection of Creole folktales is based on stories which the author heard as a child.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1862070865/?tag=2022091-20
Patrick Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953, in Fort-de-France, Martinique, France. He is the son of George Chamoiseau, a postal worker, and Emile Chamoiseau, a cuisinier.
Chamoiseau attended the Université de Scearx, France, and had licencie en Droit Prive (license in Private Law).
In advancing the Creole language and culture in literature, Chamoiseau has extended the ideas offered for discussion earlier in the twentieth century by Aime Cesaire. The dialogue became a literary movement known as “negritude” and blended African and Creole oral tradition with conventional French language and literary forms.
Chamoiseau uniquely combines academy French with the Creole dialect in his works and draws on both the oral legacy of the Creole storyteller and the European literary tradition of such innovators as Miguel de Cervantes, James Joyce, and Salman Rushdie.
Chamoiseau has written three novels: Chronique des sept miseres, published in 1986; 1988’s Solibo Magnifique; and Texaco.
Chronique des sept miseres depicts the transformation of life in Martinique that was brought on by French colonization. Calling the work a “truly great first novel,” Wendy Greenberg in the French Review asserted that the “humor, poetic style, and creole passages ... make this book truly the voice of a people.” Translated as Solibo Magnificent, Chamoiseau’s second novel relates the story of a man who is speaking to a group of people in a public square when he suddenly dies. The investigation into this mysterious death leads to the torture and murder of two suspects, and the original case is never solved.
Chamoiseau’s third novel, the highly acclaimed and prize-winning Texaco, relates the events that transpire when a town planner arrives in Texaco, a makeshift village that has grown up in the shadow of a petroleum installation.
In addition to fiction, Chamoiseau is the author of two autobiographical volumes focusing on his childhood in Martinique: Antan d’enfance, published in 1993, wherein he details his early childhood using the appellation “le négrillon” (the little black boy) when referring to himself, and a second volume, Chemin-d'ecole, which was published the following year.
An influential theorist, Chamoiseau has also written works of literary history and criticism, including Eloge de la créolité, a collaboration with Jean Bernabe and Raphael Confiant that was published in 1989, and Lettres creoles: Tracées antillaises et continentales de la littérature—Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane 1635-1975, a literary history of the Caribbean region coauthored with Confiant and published in 1991. In the latter volume, Chamoiseau and Confiant discuss Creole storytellers and oral tradition in the opening section and devote the second half of the book to the era of written literature in both Creole and French.
Chamoiseau's novel Texaco, is the winner of the 1992 Prix Goncourt, the most prestigious literary award in France.
He was awarded the Prix Garbet de la Caraibe in 1993, for his autobiographical volume Antan d’enfance.
In 1998, Chamoiseau won a Prince Claus Award for his contribution to Caribbean society.
(A spicy mix of folktales from the author's childhood in M...)
("Chamoiseau is a writer who has the sophistication of the...)
1992(Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows traces the rise and fall o...)
1999(Using the playful, orally inspired, and partially invente...)
(Drawn from a harsh world of slavery, sugar plantations an...)
(School Days (Chemin-d’Ecole) is a captivating narrative b...)
1994(During carnival time in Martinique, a storyteller falls v...)
1988(Cultural Writing. Folklore. Carribbean Studies. Translate...)
Chamoiseau married a woman named Ghslaine on December 19, 1975. The couple has a child - Yoam.
