The Return

A young man of twenty-three left his country in a hurry; an exhausted man returns thirty-three years later, from the stifling heat of Port-au-Prince by way of the endless Montreal winter. One night a phone call tells him that his father has died in New York, a father he has practically only seen in photographs, driven mad by exile. He leaves his bathtub for the road: first north, as a farewell to the world of ice, then to New York for the funeral, intending to take his father back to his native village of Barradères in southern Haiti, not the body but the spirit. In Port-au-Prince he shuts himself in a hotel room. Written in prose mixed with haiku-like verse.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

288 pages in the original

Genres

Autofiction, Migration, Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Canada, United States, Haiti

First published

2009 by Boréal

Author's age

56 when first published

ISBN

9782764606704 (original)

9781553658085 (Douglas & McIntyre, Canada)

9780857050489 (MacLehose Press, United Kingdom)

More

Wikidata