Pity the poor translator who has to grapple with Martinican writer Patrick Chamoiseau's playful and imaginative mélange of formal French and Caribbean Creole--but envy the lucky reader who gets to enjoy his tasty gumbo, Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows. First published in France in 1987, Chamoiseau's debut novel is reminiscent of the work of Gabriel García Márquez and Salman Rushdie in its wild tumbling cataracts of language, its host of characters, and its freewheeling use of magical realism. Consider, for example, the origins of protagonist Pierre Philomene "Pipi" Soleil: That evening, Héloïse went to bed a virgin for the last time, because meanwhile, black Phosphore had revealed to his sorrowing son the Method he'd learned from a sepulcher, and had turned him into a dorlis. Anatole-Anatole's modus operandi remains unknown. People get lost in conjecture trying to figure out if he used the technique of the toad hidden beneath the bed, the one of the ant that slips through keyholes, or the one of three-steps-forward-three-steps-back that lets you walk through walls. The fact remains that on the evening in question, he found himself in Héloïse's bedroom despite all locks and barricades. Putting his new expertise as a dorlis to work, he went inside her without waking her up and spent eight delicious hours on her sleeping body. When Héloïse wakes up the next morning, bruised and bloodied, she knows she's been assaulted by an incubus and takes measures (a pair of black underpants worn backwards) to protect herself against him. Unfortunately, the damage has already been done, and nine months later she gives birth to a son, who eventually grows up to be "king of the djobbers." The novel's plot, such as it is, follows Pipi's fortunes as he wields his wheelbarrow through the crowded market streets of Fort-de-France. Chamoiseau structures his tale like a collection of oral histories, dipping in and out of the life stories of minor characters, circling back and forth in time to cover a wide range of topics from slavery to World War II to relations between the white and black Martinicans. There's little if any real character development, but that's not what this "word scratcher" is after. In his dizzying cut-and-paste collage of Caribbean life, Chamoiseau is attempting nothing less than to communicate the soul of his homeland--a challenge at which he succeeds brilliantly. --Alix Wilber


From Publishers Weekly
Published in France in 1986 and appearing in the U.S. for the first time in Coverdale's excellent translation, Chamoiseau's first novel, written before Texaco, is an astonishingly assured piece of work. Famous for rejecting the Negritude style of writing, with its combination of leftist sentiment and archly Parisian French, Chamoiseau instead salts Creole narrative styles with vernacular phrases and riddles, songs and occult stories. Narrated by the departed spirits of the djobbersAindependent haulers of goodsAof Fort-de-France, Martinique, this novel, set between the 1940s and the 1970s, tells the story of master djobber Pipi. Born to Mam Elo and a dorlis (a kind of incubus), Pipi grows up in the streets of Fort-de-France. His first job, in the time of Vichy France, is transporting Gaullist Martinicans to British Dominica. He and his partner, Gogo, generally drop them in the drink, however, which backfires one night. When Pipi makes it back to land alone, he gives up his oars for a wheelbarrow. Crowned king of the djobbers for his knowledge of shortcuts and traffic, which he demonstrates in a race to transport a country vendor's giant yam, he is nevertheless unable to win Anastase, the beautiful daughter of a master of the martial dance called laghia, and he drinks himself into the gutter. Then he gets the gold bug, and takes up a vigil over the grave of a famous zombi named Afoukal, who supposedly guards a jar of gold. Through Afoukal, Pipi channels the African spirit of Martinican history. An immensely engaging comic figure, Pipi is the catalyst for a host of interlocking stories involving everything from gravedigging to Aim? C?saire. This hallucinatory, bottoms-up account of modern Martinique is a tour-de-force of nonlinear storytelling. Notes. (Nov.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Every great writer must start somewhere, and this novel was the jumping-off point for French Caribbean master Chamoiseau, winner of the Prix Goncourt for the revelatory Texaco. Published in France in 1986, the current work follows the fate of PipiA"grand master of the wheelbarrow, king of the djobbers"Ain the market of Fort-de-France, Martinique. Born rather miraculously of H?lo?se after Anatole-Anatole managed to penetrate her locked room as a dorlis, Pi-Pi (short for Pierre Philom?ne) serves as a pretext for telling the story of Fort-de France's poorAand a beautifully told story it is, rich with wonderfully wrought characters. There's Gogo the Albino, the hard-working Clarine, the hapless ElyetteApierced by love while in a cathedral and widowed early, she takes up a trade in funeral goodsAand many, many more. Throughout, their privations are evident, but the tone of the novel might be described as bustling, and the characters always sparkle with unrepressed life. Chamoiseau is a born storyteller, unspooling tale after remarkable tale like silken skeins, but the real star here is the language itselfAso gorgeous, so delectable that you will leave the book feeling slightly drunk. Highly recommended.ABarbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Alberto Manguel
Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows is a yarn spoken out loud, a kind of show-and-tell narrative full of explanations and digressions that provide not only the story itself but also a medley of experiences.


The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Jonathan Levi
Renovation, not reconstruction, is Chamoiseau's project. Using only the tools of language, memory and invention, Chamoiseau creates a past as magical and political as anything in the library of Gabriel García Márquez or William Faulkner.


From Kirkus Reviews
The first novel (published in 1986 in France) by the Martiniquean author of Texaco and Solibo Magnificent, among other colorful fiction and autobiography, is a raffish mock epic celebration of his island homeland's energetically mixed (French and Creole) language and culture. The lively antihero Pipi Soleil is an amoral ``djobber'' (deliveryman, at sea and ashore) who transports (and sometimes imperturbably murders) human cargo, contends in a (brilliantly described) wheelbarrow race, ineptly pursues the beauty of his dreams, and reluctantly guards a threatening zombie's buried treasure. This is wonderful stuff. Don't be surprised if the accomplished Chamoiseau emerges as one of the new century's leading Nobel prize candidates. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.





Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

FROM THE CRITICS

Lisa DuMond - SFSite.com

The people in Chronicle Of The Seven Sorrows will never grace the pages of school texts. The struggles and joys of their daily lives are almost lost to time. A culture rich in heritage, beliefs, and suffering has vanished. Only the ghosts and a few authors like Chamoiseau survive to keep the past from fading away entirely.

What a tragic loss, you'll realize after reading Chronicle Of The Seven Sorrows; how we have cheated ourselves.

In Martinique there was a time when its people still listened to the voices of ghosts, dorlis, zombis. The undead were as much a part of their lives as the buyers in the marketplace, and sometimes, the only verbal link to their past. Painful memories of slavery, brutality, and stolen moments of joy, remained only beneath grave soil. And, while not everyone stayed to hear the song of their history, there were some who were unable to tear themselves away.

Pipi Soleil, king of the marketplace djobbers, was one of the enchanted. He was destined to become the master of masters of the wheelbarrow and to be lured away from that exalted position again and again by the spirit's voices. The story of his life forms the core of this spellbinding and animated account of a lost time and way-of-life.

Chamoiseau's words double back, cross over themselves, and sing like a late-night storytelling session. Each fantastic tale attempts to top the one before it. The conversational style recaptures the oral tradition and, like truly great gossip, captures the reader, too. The voice of Fort-de-France, Martinique's vegetable market people spills out in a irrepressible tangle.

The living and the undead of Chronicle Of The Seven Sorrows speak in the distinct Creole tongue. Cloverdale's translation retains that flavour and sound, which means you may spend some time flipping to the notes in the back of the novel. A word here, a phrase there, might need some translation, but the momentary pause is well worth detour; there is as much history in the notes as in the story.

The original words are essential, when you eavesdrop on Phosphore the grave-digger and Anatole-Anatole (father and son dorlis who engage in a bit of serial rape) as they listen to the sad murmurs of the burial ground's technically dead residents. To miss the wrenching questions of the zombi Afoukal would be deprivation akin to his own.

So? More than half the population of Martinique was undead. Strange how much more life they embodied in the time before progress and government "assistance" turned them into fading shadows.

Fight back. Read every word of Chamoiseau's you can latch onto. The voice of the shadows of Martinique will make you grieve for precious things lost, and hunger for just one more story to bring them back again.

Publishers Weekly

Published in France in 1986 and appearing in the U.S. for the first time in Coverdale's excellent translation, Chamoiseau's first novel, written before Texaco, is an astonishingly assured piece of work. Famous for rejecting the Negritude style of writing, with its combination of leftist sentiment and archly Parisian French, Chamoiseau instead salts Creole narrative styles with vernacular phrases and riddles, songs and occult stories. Narrated by the departed spirits of the djobbers--independent haulers of goods--of Fort-de-France, Martinique, this novel, set between the 1940s and the 1970s, tells the story of master djobber Pipi. Born to Mam Elo and a dorlis (a kind of incubus), Pipi grows up in the streets of Fort-de-France. His first job, in the time of Vichy France, is transporting Gaullist Martinicans to British Dominica. He and his partner, Gogo, generally drop them in the drink, however, which backfires one night. When Pipi makes it back to land alone, he gives up his oars for a wheelbarrow. Crowned king of the djobbers for his knowledge of shortcuts and traffic, which he demonstrates in a race to transport a country vendor's giant yam, he is nevertheless unable to win Anastase, the beautiful daughter of a master of the martial dance called laghia, and he drinks himself into the gutter. Then he gets the gold bug, and takes up a vigil over the grave of a famous zombi named Afoukal, who supposedly guards a jar of gold. Through Afoukal, Pipi channels the African spirit of Martinican history. An immensely engaging comic figure, Pipi is the catalyst for a host of interlocking stories involving everything from gravedigging to Aim C saire. This hallucinatory, bottoms-up account of modern Martinique is a tour-de-force of nonlinear storytelling. Notes. (Nov.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Every great writer must start somewhere, and this novel was the jumping-off point for French Caribbean master Chamoiseau, winner of the Prix Goncourt for the revelatory Texaco. Published in France in 1986, the current work follows the fate of Pipi--"grand master of the wheelbarrow, king of the djobbers"--in the market of Fort-de-France, Martinique. Born rather miraculously of H lo se after Anatole-Anatole managed to penetrate her locked room as a dorlis, Pi-Pi (short for Pierre Philom ne) serves as a pretext for telling the story of Fort-de France's poor--and a beautifully told story it is, rich with wonderfully wrought characters. There's Gogo the Albino, the hard-working Clarine, the hapless Elyette--pierced by love while in a cathedral and widowed early, she takes up a trade in funeral goods--and many, many more. Throughout, their privations are evident, but the tone of the novel might be described as bustling, and the characters always sparkle with unrepressed life. Chamoiseau is a born storyteller, unspooling tale after remarkable tale like silken skeins, but the real star here is the language itself--so gorgeous, so delectable that you will leave the book feeling slightly drunk. Highly recommended.--Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Alberto Manguel - The New York Times