The Sense of Community in French Caribbean Fiction

This groundbreaking book analyzes the theme of community in seven French Caribbean novels in relation to the work of the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. The complex history of the islands means that community is often a central and problematic issue in their literature, underlying a range of other questions such as political agency, individual and collective subjectivity, attitudes towards the past and the future, and even the literary form itself. Celia Britton here studies a range of key books from the region, including Edouard Glissant'sLe Quatrieme Siecle,Patrick Chamoiseau'sTexaco, Daniel Maximin'sL'Ile et une nuit,and Vincent Placoly'sL'eau-de-mort guildive, among others.

Celia Britton is professor of French at University College London. Her previous books include Edouard Glissant and Postcolonial Theory: Strategies of Language and Resistance and Race and the Unconscious: Freudianism in French Caribbean Thought.