• Ready to Burst
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Archipelago Books

Ready to Burst

Ready to Burst

by Frankétienne, translated from the French by Kaiama L. Glover

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Ready to Burst tells the tale of a young man's efforts to navigate the challenges of a deeply troubled society. The novel moves fluidly between his experiences and those of his alter ego, opening a window onto the absurd realities of a dictatorship. First published in 1968, Ready to Burst presents a sensitive critique of François Duvalier's suffocating regime and its consequences for a generation of young people in Haiti. The novel offers at once an exquisite verbal painting of life within a specific context of terror and a vivid exploration of love, hope, and the delicate membrane between reality and dream.

Additional Book Information

Series: Archipelago Books
ISBN: 9781935744788
Pages: 240
Publication Date:

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, Huffington Post

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