Lyonel Trouillot’s harrowing novel depicts a night of blazing violence in modern-day Port-au-Prince and recalls hundreds of years of violence stretching back even before the birth of Haiti in the fires of revolution. Three narrators—a madam, a taxi driver, and a post office employee—describe in almost hallucinatory terms the escalating chaos of a bloody uprising that pits the partisans of the Prophet against the murderous might of the great dictator Deceased Forever-Immortal.

 

The drama of promise and betrayal in Haitian life inform’s Street of Lost Footsteps with the grim irony and savage tenderness characteristic of writers for whom the repetitiveness of history has gone beyond tragedy, through farce, and on into insanity. With impressive originality and touching immediacy, Trouillot explores the nature of political oppression, memory, and truth.

A poet, novelist, and essayist who writes in Haitian Kreyòl and French, Lyonel Trouillot is a founding member of the Haitian Writers Association. Linda Coverdale’s many translations include Patrick Chamoiseau’s Schooldays and Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows, both published by the University of Nebraska Press.

“The colloquial monologues are scalding. They light up the reader like a torch. Corruption and despair do not phase our trio. The old madam achieves a wistful catharsis. The postal worker and Lawrence make everyday living exquisite. And the taxi driver turns the Street of Lost Footsteps from a nightmare zone into a destination.”—Nicholas Burns, Review of Contemporary Fiction