Texaco
by Patrick Chamoiseau
A squatter community tells its story to the man sent to demolish it.
you want to understand Caribbean history through the people who built something from nothing and refused to leave
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Marie-Sophie Laborieux has spent her life building the community of Texaco on the outskirts of Fort-de-France — a shantytown of the dispossessed, named after the oil depot it borders. When an urban planner arrives to demolish it, she tells him the story of how it came to exist — her father's life under slavery's aftermath, the city's history, the community's survival. Chamoiseau writes in a Creole-inflected French that carries the rhythms of oral tradition. The most formally ambitious Martiniquais novel ever written. Won the Prix Goncourt. A dispatch about what people build when the official world has no place for them.
WHERE THIS BOOK LIVES
- Setting
- Martinique • Caribbean
- Voice
- Written by a Martiniquais author
- Themes
- After EmpireGenerations
