Popa Singer
The latest novel by one of Haiti’s most brilliant writers
The most recent book by the renowned Haitian novelist, essayist, and poet René Depestre, Popa Singer is a semiautobiographical chronicle of Haiti in the late 1950s, the very moment when the country first came under decades of despotic rule.
To celebrate her son’s return home after years of exile, Dianira Fontoriol (aka “Popa Singer”)—an indomitable mother armed only with her sewing machine and her personal convictions—determines to resist in her own way the infamous Ubu King of the Tropics: François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Depestre’s novel tells the story of this at once intimate and epic struggle. Combining colorful fantasy and biting social satire, it is a deeply personal and singularly artistic take on an infamous chapter in Haitian history.
Popa Singer is the book we need now—necessary, timely, and urgent in the face of the crisis unfolding in Haiti today. The translation is wonderfully precise, no small feat when we consider the stylistic innovation that Depestre brings to this text. Glover faithfully preserves Depestre’s quintessentially quirky writing, and his radical nature comes through in word, style, and form. A fascinating read for students and scholars of world literatures in French and of African diasporic literatures in general.- Régine Michelle Jean-Charles, Northeastern University
