Ready to Burst

by Franketienne

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Pub Date Oct 14 2014 | Archive Date Oct 14 2014

Steerforth Press | Archipelago

General Fiction (Adult)

Description

Ready to Burst follows the lives of two young men and their individual attempts to make sense of the deeply troubled society surrounding them. An informed critique of the “brain drain” prompted by the Duvalier dictatorship, Ready to Burst is, in Frankétienne’s words, a portrait of “the extreme bitterness of doom in the face of the blind machinery of power.” Widely recognized as Haiti’s most important literary figure and an outspoken challenger of political oppression, Frankétienne was a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009. The New York Times has called Frankétienne “the Father of Haitian Letters.”

Advance Praise

• "His work can speak to the most intellectual person in the society as well as the most humble. It's a very generous kind of genius he has, one I can't imagine Haitian literature ever existing without." -- Edwidge Danticat

• "The "burst" in "Ready to Burst", also announces the eruption onto the scene of one of literature's great figures [...] a magician of technique and feeling, in the tradition of a great family of writers like James Joyce, João Guimarães Rosa et Osman Lins." Rafael Lucas in his preface to the 2004 French edition of "Ready to Burst"

• "Each of Frankétienne's words builds a world of which every Haitian dreams."Emmelie Prophete, Haitian-American writer (Interview w/Huffington Post)

• "Frankétienne speaks like an educated man [...] but also like a friend and a citizen of the world at peace with himself and with others." Annick Chalifour, l'Express.

• "It is Frankétienne's audacity in his writing - his charming ability to calmly bring his interlocutor into his initially terrifying world [...] which makes him such an incredible writer and persona". Alessandra Benedicty, Professor at the City College of New York (Interview w/ Huffington Post)

• "His work can speak to the most intellectual person in the society as well as the most humble. It's a very generous kind of genius he has, one I can't imagine Haitian literature ever existing...

Marketing Plan

This is the first time Franketienne has been translated into English. Therefore, there should be a significant amount of excitement, especially within the academic community as well as with Francophone and Caribbean literature scholars/students.

Friday, Sept. 19 , 7:00 PM Haitian Cultural Exchange + Brooklyn Library Event w/ Kaiama L. Glover & Madison Smartt Bell, FiveMyles Gallery, 558 St. Johns Place, Brooklyn, NY 11238
Brooklyn Book Fair, Sunday, Sept. 21
Author and Translator to be featured at Miami Book Fair in November.
We will also bring him to Los Angeles for various events and exchanges with Haitian immigrant communities.

This is the first time Franketienne has been translated into English. Therefore, there should be a significant amount of excitement, especially within the academic community as well as with...

Available Editions

EDITION	Other Format
ISBN	9781935744788
PRICE	$18.00 (USD)

Additional Information

Average rating from 4 members

Featured Reviews

Andrija F, Educator

I can say without any shadow of a doubt that this is nearly a masterpiece. It's hard to put in a couple of sentences what it is all about and I'm not even going to try. It is short (unfortunately, I wanted to read so, so much more), but it is at the same time a literary manifest (spiralism!), (a/nti)humanist vision of the world, dire condemnation of colonialism in all its past and present forms, and a story about Raynand the son, the novelist, the (non)worker, the Haitian.