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Mûr à crever
La naissance d'un géant. Un immense cri de révolte et de souffrance, à faire s'effondrer les murailles, qui emporte tout dans sa fureur, bouscule la langue, la réinvente, porte les mots jusqu'à leur point d'incandescence. Dans une Haïti de cauchemar, sous le joug de Duvalier, où des hommes à bout de désespoir préfèrent se jeter dans une mer grouillante de requins plutôt que de retourner à l'enfer quotidien tandis que les envahisseurs "yankees" multiplient les atrocités, comme en écho à celles perpétrées au Viêtnam sous le napalm, deux hommes se croisent, se sauvent, se retrouvent après s'être perdus: Raynand l'activiste, lancé dans une course folle contre la mort, la misère, l'exil, condamné à l'échec, et Paulin l'écrivain, enfermé dans sa création, que les circonstances précipiteront sur le devant de la scène, transformé en tribun - Raynand et Paulin, les deux visages de Frankétienne, jusque-là connu comme poète et qui, par ce roman publié en 1968, s'affirme d'un coup comme un romancier de génie.
190 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
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About the author
Frankétienne
31 books32 followersFrankétienne was a Haitian writer, poet, playwright, painter, musician, activist, and intellectual. He was recognized as one of Haiti's leading writers and playwrights of both French and Haitian Creole, and was "known as the father of Haitian letters". As a painter, he was known for his colorful abstract works, often emphasizing the colors blue and red. He was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009, made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres (Order of the Arts and Letters), and was named UNESCO Artist for Peace in 2010.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
May 15, 2024
“In wanting so desperately to speak, I’ve become no more than a screaming mouth. I no longer worry about what I write. I simply write. Because I must. Because I’m suffocating. I write anything. Any way.”
I read the English translation of this novel, originally written in French by a Haitian author and published in 1968 under the title Mûr à crever. It must have been a very difficult book to translate, due to the author’s extravagant use of language, but as far as I can tell the translator has succeeded.
The style of the novel is very unusual and won’t be to everyone’s taste, but for me this was a good example of how it can be worthwhile to depart from my usual reading preferences. The author explains he is writing in a literary style he calls “spiralism”. To begin with I didn’t understand what he meant but he explains it again about midway through. I’ll let the following extract speak for itself:
“Whatever the word, it’s always emptier in the middle of a sentence than it seems to be in reality. But when left to roam on its own, written or spoken, the simplest word acquires the richness of the swinging single with a world of partners to choose from. Whereas, in the context of a sentence, it once again becomes the pallid spouse stuck in the heart of a family with the mother of his children hanging on. Thus it often happens that I enclose a single word within two periods, so as to make it new, more powerful. Faster. More evocative. Richer. It’s a new kind of sentence. Created with the help of a lexeme that plays the strange role of the unstable kernel, perpetually popping. I call this an undulatory sentence.”
This is a plotless novel consisting of random scenes from the life of the main protagonist, Raynand, together with various surreal and hallucinatory episodes. As the novel progresses these latter come more and more to the fore. There’s also his friend Paulin, the creator of spiralism,
Haiti is notorious as being a place of desperate poverty, and when this novel was written the country was under the rule of its infamous dictator, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. The author doesn’t mention Papa Doc by name (a very sensible decision on his part) but the grinding hardship of life in Haiti is a big theme of the book.
“All I have to do is start thinking, insofar as I can even manage that, and I start wishing for death. What’s waiting for me…an ordeal without end. I’m already shaking. Unemployment. Hunger. Fear. Anguish. Nightmare from which there’s no awakening. Paralysis of the tongue. Stiffening of the limbs. All that kills without mercy. And the rest of the footage for this film isn’t very hard to imagine…Walking mummies. Individuals reduced to children. Zombies kept in line with whacks of a cudgel. Oh yes, zombies! We’ve all become zombies.”
Late in the book the author blames exploitation by the west for the condition of Haiti.
Normally, I prefer fiction in the realist style, which this certainly isn’t, but I found it absolutely addictive. A tremendous achievement! I’m not necessarily recommending it though, as it won’t be for everyone. GR friends can maybe judge from the quotes whether this book will be for them.
I read the English translation of this novel, originally written in French by a Haitian author and published in 1968 under the title Mûr à crever. It must have been a very difficult book to translate, due to the author’s extravagant use of language, but as far as I can tell the translator has succeeded.
The style of the novel is very unusual and won’t be to everyone’s taste, but for me this was a good example of how it can be worthwhile to depart from my usual reading preferences. The author explains he is writing in a literary style he calls “spiralism”. To begin with I didn’t understand what he meant but he explains it again about midway through. I’ll let the following extract speak for itself:
“Whatever the word, it’s always emptier in the middle of a sentence than it seems to be in reality. But when left to roam on its own, written or spoken, the simplest word acquires the richness of the swinging single with a world of partners to choose from. Whereas, in the context of a sentence, it once again becomes the pallid spouse stuck in the heart of a family with the mother of his children hanging on. Thus it often happens that I enclose a single word within two periods, so as to make it new, more powerful. Faster. More evocative. Richer. It’s a new kind of sentence. Created with the help of a lexeme that plays the strange role of the unstable kernel, perpetually popping. I call this an undulatory sentence.”
This is a plotless novel consisting of random scenes from the life of the main protagonist, Raynand, together with various surreal and hallucinatory episodes. As the novel progresses these latter come more and more to the fore. There’s also his friend Paulin, the creator of spiralism,
Haiti is notorious as being a place of desperate poverty, and when this novel was written the country was under the rule of its infamous dictator, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. The author doesn’t mention Papa Doc by name (a very sensible decision on his part) but the grinding hardship of life in Haiti is a big theme of the book.
“All I have to do is start thinking, insofar as I can even manage that, and I start wishing for death. What’s waiting for me…an ordeal without end. I’m already shaking. Unemployment. Hunger. Fear. Anguish. Nightmare from which there’s no awakening. Paralysis of the tongue. Stiffening of the limbs. All that kills without mercy. And the rest of the footage for this film isn’t very hard to imagine…Walking mummies. Individuals reduced to children. Zombies kept in line with whacks of a cudgel. Oh yes, zombies! We’ve all become zombies.”
Late in the book the author blames exploitation by the west for the condition of Haiti.
Normally, I prefer fiction in the realist style, which this certainly isn’t, but I found it absolutely addictive. A tremendous achievement! I’m not necessarily recommending it though, as it won’t be for everyone. GR friends can maybe judge from the quotes whether this book will be for them.
December 31, 2024
"Will my cries for help manage to move anyone? To reach some sympathetic target? I don’t know. But unhappiness, misery, despair, rage, rivers, storms, blood, fire, seas, hurricanes, my country, trees, mountains, my people, women, children, old men, all men, all things, and all beings, swell in my voice, to the point where, should I fail, I’ll have been truly alone. Terrifyingly alone. Horribly alone."- Franketienne, Ready to Burst
This is one of my favourite fiction reads of the year. Every single one of the French-Caribbean writers I’ve come across have been brilliant, and Haitian writer Franketienne is no exception. If you’ve read and loved Edouard Glissant or Aime Cesaire, you’re sure to like Franketienne; he writes in the same energetic way as both, and in the same visceral way as Cesaire.
"Ready to Burst" introduces us to two young men who are trying to make sense of their very brutal society. The novel also introduces us to a new form of writing, spiralism, which is also known as the “Dialect of hurricanes. Patois of rains. Language of storms. I speak the unfolding of life in a spiral.”
And the current “unfolding of life” in Haiti is a stormy political situation. One of the characters in the novel is himself a writer and finds writing to be the only way he can get any peace:
"In wanting so desperately to speak, I’ve become no more than a screaming mouth. I no longer worry about what I write. I simply write. Because I must. Because I’m suffocating, I write anything. Any way. People can call it what they want: novel, essay, poem, autobiography, testimony, narrative, memory exercise, or nothing at all. I don’t even know, myself. Yet what I write feels perfectly familiar to me. No one can say much more than what he has lived."
In a sense this novel is about writing a novel, and there were so many interesting passages about what a novel is, whether the novel is dead, what writer’s block is:
"The novel is a vision of life. And as far as I know, life isn’t a segment. It isn’t a vector. Nor is it a simple curve. It’s a spiral in motion. It opens and closes in irregular helices. It becomes a question of surprising at the right moment a few rings of the spiral. So I’m constructing my novel in a spiral, with diverse situations traversed by the problematic of the human, and held in awkward positions. And the elastic turns of the spiral, embracing beings and things in its elliptical and circular fragments, defining the movements of life. This is what I’m using the neologism Spiralism to describe."
There are so many wonderful paragraphs in this very poetic, very visceral book:
"It is then that I become a tempest of words, bursting open the hypocrisy of clouds and the deceitfulness of silence. Rivers. Storms. Flashes of lightning. Mountains. Trees. Lights. Rains. Untamed oceans. Take me away in the frenzied marrow of your joints."
I’m not sure how I came across this book but I’m glad I did!
This is one of my favourite fiction reads of the year. Every single one of the French-Caribbean writers I’ve come across have been brilliant, and Haitian writer Franketienne is no exception. If you’ve read and loved Edouard Glissant or Aime Cesaire, you’re sure to like Franketienne; he writes in the same energetic way as both, and in the same visceral way as Cesaire.
"Ready to Burst" introduces us to two young men who are trying to make sense of their very brutal society. The novel also introduces us to a new form of writing, spiralism, which is also known as the “Dialect of hurricanes. Patois of rains. Language of storms. I speak the unfolding of life in a spiral.”
And the current “unfolding of life” in Haiti is a stormy political situation. One of the characters in the novel is himself a writer and finds writing to be the only way he can get any peace:
"In wanting so desperately to speak, I’ve become no more than a screaming mouth. I no longer worry about what I write. I simply write. Because I must. Because I’m suffocating, I write anything. Any way. People can call it what they want: novel, essay, poem, autobiography, testimony, narrative, memory exercise, or nothing at all. I don’t even know, myself. Yet what I write feels perfectly familiar to me. No one can say much more than what he has lived."
In a sense this novel is about writing a novel, and there were so many interesting passages about what a novel is, whether the novel is dead, what writer’s block is:
"The novel is a vision of life. And as far as I know, life isn’t a segment. It isn’t a vector. Nor is it a simple curve. It’s a spiral in motion. It opens and closes in irregular helices. It becomes a question of surprising at the right moment a few rings of the spiral. So I’m constructing my novel in a spiral, with diverse situations traversed by the problematic of the human, and held in awkward positions. And the elastic turns of the spiral, embracing beings and things in its elliptical and circular fragments, defining the movements of life. This is what I’m using the neologism Spiralism to describe."
There are so many wonderful paragraphs in this very poetic, very visceral book:
"It is then that I become a tempest of words, bursting open the hypocrisy of clouds and the deceitfulness of silence. Rivers. Storms. Flashes of lightning. Mountains. Trees. Lights. Rains. Untamed oceans. Take me away in the frenzied marrow of your joints."
I’m not sure how I came across this book but I’m glad I did!
February 23, 2016
1968 was a global phenomenom, an international breaking point. So it shouldn't actually surprise that that year saw the publication of this explosively compact-yet-sprawling work of Haitian post/modernism. In parallel fictional and autobiographical threads, the then-28-year-old author enumerates the massive problems besetting his land, but through the philosophy of Spiralism that he seems to have created as much as a literary manifesto as an ideological one, the novel manages to be as exuberant as it is despairing. Existence is doubt-ridden and filled with struggle, but literature, however much of a struggle it may itself be, provides a violent, ecstatic path to escape.
December 9, 2014
Not my thing, but as other reviewers have pointed out, still a masterpiece, and, I imagine, inspiring for anyone who wants to write. Ready to Burst is, depending on your tolerance for this kind of thing, raw, emotional, passionate, overwrought, mawkish, decadent and nonsensical. It is also a fascinating example of what can happen when a writer says, more or less, "f*ck it, I'm just going to get this out," but doesn't check his or her brain at the door. There's no consistency at all: passages switch from first to third person for no good reason; there are long reports of experience that aren't attached to any individual character; the plot is mostly the attempt by one person to tell a novelist that he should call his book 'Ready to Burst.' The book is written in about every form ever: Socratic dialogue? Yes. Stream of Consciousness? Sure. Memoir? Absolutely. Literary manifesto? Throw it in the mix. Surrealism? Bien sur. Revolutionary call to arms? Why the heck not.
And despite breaking all kinds of rules, it works. If you care at all about form, you should give it a look, and the same goes for those who prefer their fiction, how can I put it? Unfiltered. Add to all this that it's set in Haiti during Papa Doc's dictatorship, which should appeal to your interest in history, and there's really no excuse for not reading this book.
And despite breaking all kinds of rules, it works. If you care at all about form, you should give it a look, and the same goes for those who prefer their fiction, how can I put it? Unfiltered. Add to all this that it's set in Haiti during Papa Doc's dictatorship, which should appeal to your interest in history, and there's really no excuse for not reading this book.
Read
September 10, 2022I like books about how writers become writers. I'm sure I've read a long list of such books, and while some of them might resemble each other, at least in the usual struggles and frustrations that a future writer meets with, none would resemble this book. It is utterly unique, as colorful and phantasmagoric as the cover of my edition.
July 16, 2019
Every day, I employ the dialect of untamed hurricanes. I speak the madness of opposing winds.
Every evening, I use the patois of furious rains. I speak the rage of overflowing waters.
Every night, I speak to the islands of the Caribbean in the language of hysterical storms. I speak the madness of the sea in heat.
Dialect of hurricanes. Patois of rains. Language of storms. Unfolding of life in a spiral.
In its essence, life is tension. Toward something. Toward someone. Toward oneself. Toward the point of maturation where the ancient and the new unravel. Death and birth. And every being finds itself – in part – in pursuit of its double. A pursuit that might even seem to bear the intensity of need, of desire, of infinite quest.
*
But unhappiness, misery, despair, rage, rivers, storms, blood, fire, seas, hurricanes, my country, trees, mountains, my people, women, children, old men, all men, all things, and all beings swell in my voice, to the point where, should I fail, I’ll have been truly alone. Terrifyingly alone. Horribly alone.
*
Because of you, sadness has enveloped me beneath her gray wing. My obsession, my misery – they circulate in my blood, clothed in your gaze. The wound of absence.
*
The same situation. The same conditions. The same troubles. The same despair. An immense wandering heart. A misery without moorings.
*
Why keep looking, when life poses questions with no ready answers? Solutions are all out of reach.
*
It isn’t that I don’t know what to say. It’s the way of saying it that torments me. The obsession with language in the crucible of solitude.
*
As for the writer, he must constantly risk an incursion into the interior volcano, in order to extract, burned by lava, even the simplest word.
Every evening, I use the patois of furious rains. I speak the rage of overflowing waters.
Every night, I speak to the islands of the Caribbean in the language of hysterical storms. I speak the madness of the sea in heat.
Dialect of hurricanes. Patois of rains. Language of storms. Unfolding of life in a spiral.
In its essence, life is tension. Toward something. Toward someone. Toward oneself. Toward the point of maturation where the ancient and the new unravel. Death and birth. And every being finds itself – in part – in pursuit of its double. A pursuit that might even seem to bear the intensity of need, of desire, of infinite quest.
*
But unhappiness, misery, despair, rage, rivers, storms, blood, fire, seas, hurricanes, my country, trees, mountains, my people, women, children, old men, all men, all things, and all beings swell in my voice, to the point where, should I fail, I’ll have been truly alone. Terrifyingly alone. Horribly alone.
*
Because of you, sadness has enveloped me beneath her gray wing. My obsession, my misery – they circulate in my blood, clothed in your gaze. The wound of absence.
*
The same situation. The same conditions. The same troubles. The same despair. An immense wandering heart. A misery without moorings.
*
Why keep looking, when life poses questions with no ready answers? Solutions are all out of reach.
*
It isn’t that I don’t know what to say. It’s the way of saying it that torments me. The obsession with language in the crucible of solitude.
*
As for the writer, he must constantly risk an incursion into the interior volcano, in order to extract, burned by lava, even the simplest word.
January 31, 2019
Frankétienne's style is certainly different from any author that I've read before. Poetic in its own way.This book provoked nostalgia in me, I long to be in my country again some day, I long for our freedom.
August 8, 2014
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. In Frankétienne's words it is a "melancholic revenge on a world gone mad".
November 29, 2025
"Death: You were too attached to your unhappy past. Did you ever break the infernal circle of the 'I' in order to enter into the luminous round that is the 'we?' Did you for even one day try to break through the triangle of limitation? Did you really acknowledge your weaknesses? What have you done with your life?
Dying Man: My whole life I’ve owned up to both my strengths and my weaknesses. I’ve never claimed to be an angel. Nor a saint either. I was born in the dust of an uncertain dawn. Obstacles, unexpectedness, spontaneity, pain, bursts of sorrow and joy fill my travel journal from my long journey to unknown lands.
Death: You never knew the itinerary. You didn’t even make an effort to figure out the point of the journey.
Dying Man: I tried. Looked. Stumbled. The journey is peopled with nightmares. Each time I glimpse the light, a wave of mist rises up. A thick fog immediately covers my eyelids. And then, fearing exile on the edge of this darkness, I run tirelessly into closed doors. Barely does a bit of light begin to flutter than the breath of evil snuffs out all hope at its roots.
Death: So you give up, having neither the courage nor the patience to handle impossibility during difficult times. What would you do if I left and didn’t take you? How would you choose to live the newest scenes of this great drama?
Dying Man: I wouldn’t hesitate. I would still choose to be a man. And not a saint. I would be reborn with the same weaknesses. I would make the same mistakes that led to me remaining a man – that is, a being who seeks himself in the cries of blood in the darkness."
Dying Man: My whole life I’ve owned up to both my strengths and my weaknesses. I’ve never claimed to be an angel. Nor a saint either. I was born in the dust of an uncertain dawn. Obstacles, unexpectedness, spontaneity, pain, bursts of sorrow and joy fill my travel journal from my long journey to unknown lands.
Death: You never knew the itinerary. You didn’t even make an effort to figure out the point of the journey.
Dying Man: I tried. Looked. Stumbled. The journey is peopled with nightmares. Each time I glimpse the light, a wave of mist rises up. A thick fog immediately covers my eyelids. And then, fearing exile on the edge of this darkness, I run tirelessly into closed doors. Barely does a bit of light begin to flutter than the breath of evil snuffs out all hope at its roots.
Death: So you give up, having neither the courage nor the patience to handle impossibility during difficult times. What would you do if I left and didn’t take you? How would you choose to live the newest scenes of this great drama?
Dying Man: I wouldn’t hesitate. I would still choose to be a man. And not a saint. I would be reborn with the same weaknesses. I would make the same mistakes that led to me remaining a man – that is, a being who seeks himself in the cries of blood in the darkness."
July 21, 2020
cool setting, cool ending
September 12, 2022
An excellent yet compact novel of an unfortunate and unforgettable society. Franketienne and his narrators, Raynand and Paulin, obsessed with the Spiralist way of life (I wasn’t familiar with that) as they weave in and out of their days. A lot packed into less than 200 pages.
May 21, 2025
As Kaiama L. Glover writes in "Haiti Unbound," Spiralist authors "ask a great deal of their reader"—and she notes Frankétienne's assertion in "Ultravocal" that "Literary production is only valuable through creative readings ... The reader, as invested as the writer in the creative function, is henceforth responsible for the destiny of the written."
As other reviewers have noted, "Ready to Burst" is a challenging novel — but the intent of Spiralist literature is creative, generative challenge.
"Ready to Burst" rejects fixed narrative forms, and is told in alternating waves of poetry, free association, theater-style dialogue, and story. We follow the protagonist, Raynand, as he chases his double, Paulin, through accelerating chaos in Port-au-Prince. Paulin is writing a novel, which itself is tangled into the meta narrative, and there are moments of observation and reflection that are poetry broken free of time. The story is fragmented and not bound by linear chronology—a reflection of the protagonist's experience of life and an embrace of chaos.
The novel is complex and lyrical. "Every day," the narrator tells us, "I employ the dialect of untamed hurricanes. I speak the madness of opposing winds. Every evening, I use the patois of furious rains. I speak the rage of overflowing waters." If, as Frankétienne says, we as readers are responsible for the destiny of the written, engaging with this novel means we become responsible for the dialect of untamed hurricanes and the patois of furious rains. And the rage of overflowing waters. Yes, Spiralists ask a great deal of their reader! I loved every word.
I also recognize the monumental task the translation work was for this novel and have incredible admiration for the beautiful job Kaiama Glover did putting this into English. I eagerly await her translation of "Ultravocal."
As other reviewers have noted, "Ready to Burst" is a challenging novel — but the intent of Spiralist literature is creative, generative challenge.
"Ready to Burst" rejects fixed narrative forms, and is told in alternating waves of poetry, free association, theater-style dialogue, and story. We follow the protagonist, Raynand, as he chases his double, Paulin, through accelerating chaos in Port-au-Prince. Paulin is writing a novel, which itself is tangled into the meta narrative, and there are moments of observation and reflection that are poetry broken free of time. The story is fragmented and not bound by linear chronology—a reflection of the protagonist's experience of life and an embrace of chaos.
The novel is complex and lyrical. "Every day," the narrator tells us, "I employ the dialect of untamed hurricanes. I speak the madness of opposing winds. Every evening, I use the patois of furious rains. I speak the rage of overflowing waters." If, as Frankétienne says, we as readers are responsible for the destiny of the written, engaging with this novel means we become responsible for the dialect of untamed hurricanes and the patois of furious rains. And the rage of overflowing waters. Yes, Spiralists ask a great deal of their reader! I loved every word.
I also recognize the monumental task the translation work was for this novel and have incredible admiration for the beautiful job Kaiama Glover did putting this into English. I eagerly await her translation of "Ultravocal."
October 29, 2025
Wow! Read this in one sitting, couldn't put it down. This is an audacious and imperfect debut, which is foundational in setting the stage for the Haitian post-war aesthetic known as Spiralism. Spiralism involves openness to life, to all genres of narrative (thus Frankétienne describes it as Total Genre), and to the wholeness of the partial. Spiralism breathes life into inherited and ready-made fragments by stitching them together in a novel, sometimes jarring way.
This is a novel about the double, a central theme in Spiralism. It's also a novel about missed connections, about writing and trying to name a novel, and about how the death of the writer is the birth of narrative. Our protagonist has a doppelganger who is writing a novel, and who tasks the protagonist with naming the novel. Our protagonist fails to connect with a lover, Solange; fails to make a life for himself as a refugee in the Bahamas; and fails to tell his writer friend or twin the title he has come up with for the novel. I won't spoil anything else. Along the way, we get metafictional manifesto, autofictional liturgy, and even a bit of thanato-theater. There is so much richness to the world and language here! I do kind of wish it were longer.
We desperately need more Frankétienne translations in English.
This is a novel about the double, a central theme in Spiralism. It's also a novel about missed connections, about writing and trying to name a novel, and about how the death of the writer is the birth of narrative. Our protagonist has a doppelganger who is writing a novel, and who tasks the protagonist with naming the novel. Our protagonist fails to connect with a lover, Solange; fails to make a life for himself as a refugee in the Bahamas; and fails to tell his writer friend or twin the title he has come up with for the novel. I won't spoil anything else. Along the way, we get metafictional manifesto, autofictional liturgy, and even a bit of thanato-theater. There is so much richness to the world and language here! I do kind of wish it were longer.
We desperately need more Frankétienne translations in English.
Read
November 13, 2023Franketienne is considered one of the principal writers of Haitian literature, and in this book it is clear why, even if I did not fully enjoy it. Part observations, part manifesto, part bildungsroman, and all written in a vivid style, this plotless book embodies a revolutionary mentality that serves as a hallmark of the time it was written in. Intellectualism and boredom go hand in hand, served by the background of extreme poverty in Haiti.
There’s no question in my mind that the author wrote something singular, comparable to work like Howl in its fervor. But the “Spiralist” foundation of the book serves as more of a spirit than a structure. The emotions that guide this work take center stage, and this is, I think, the point.
As a novel, I felt it holds up better for its historical merit and style, two factors that are too often overlooked in contemporary fiction. Reading this, you will understand the rage and desperation of a moment in Haiti. I can’t say I exactly enjoyed it.
There’s no question in my mind that the author wrote something singular, comparable to work like Howl in its fervor. But the “Spiralist” foundation of the book serves as more of a spirit than a structure. The emotions that guide this work take center stage, and this is, I think, the point.
As a novel, I felt it holds up better for its historical merit and style, two factors that are too often overlooked in contemporary fiction. Reading this, you will understand the rage and desperation of a moment in Haiti. I can’t say I exactly enjoyed it.
January 31, 2025
Frankétienne is, perhaps, too smart for me. A foundational work at the heart of the Haitian Spiralist movement—an aesthetic and philosophical orientation framing modernism within the Caribbean post-colonial contezt—this novel is metafictive and curious as to the aesthetics of trauma and time.
Occasionally the beautiful horror of the prose woke me up, but the sexual dynamics are very, very tired.
Frankétienne is very compelling as an artist—a truly wonderful painter—and this novel holds a lot of value for, perhaps, an academic approach to Afro-Caribbean aesthetics. Indeed, Kaiama L. Glover, the translator, has made plenty of hay with that during her appointment at Columbia. I just can’t say that I like the book.
Occasionally the beautiful horror of the prose woke me up, but the sexual dynamics are very, very tired.
Frankétienne is very compelling as an artist—a truly wonderful painter—and this novel holds a lot of value for, perhaps, an academic approach to Afro-Caribbean aesthetics. Indeed, Kaiama L. Glover, the translator, has made plenty of hay with that during her appointment at Columbia. I just can’t say that I like the book.
Read
February 3, 2025"The public will understand. In fact, that's who I'm writing the last chapter for. Does one have to be a genius to know if the weather is good or bad, if it's night or day, if it's cold or hot outside? Everyone knows, with no fear of getting it wrong, when it's raining and when it's sunny. That's why, theoretically, I won't explain anything to my reader. He'll make out the landscape by the ambient temperature that touches his senses directly. He'll play along from the start".
This book, that touched my sould with - what one might say - such ease - will stay forever on the bookshelf of writings that I will remember my whole life.
This book, that touched my sould with - what one might say - such ease - will stay forever on the bookshelf of writings that I will remember my whole life.
February 5, 2025
ive been waiting for months to read franketienne and was not disappointed. genuinely one of the best books ive read in a long time like wow. reminded me of marianne fritz's first book which name slips from my mind but this one was infinitely better, both immensely tiny of a universe which is really unending. there are many other things it brings to mind, wish i could use pictures as my review.
also i do not think that it is plotless, its defined by itself as the plot being the language. should be required reading
also i do not think that it is plotless, its defined by itself as the plot being the language. should be required reading
June 30, 2025
So many genius turns of phrase, and I really liked the last part of the book with Paulin's speech to the crowd and the ending lines. However, I must admit that while I enjoyed individual poetic moments, Frankétienne's litanies of sentence fragments were difficult for me to get through. I am glad I persisted through the challenge, though.
August 27, 2020
Oh my days, this was excellent. I must read more Haitian literature.
February 28, 2021
A fantastic novel about the avant-garde and the brutality of colonialism.
June 19, 2025
a rare translational success. a rare metamanifesto success. rest in peace Frankétienne
December 20, 2014
Have you ever thought your own path was predetermined? Have you ever had a really strong sense of deja vu? Have you ever thought you are reliving a moment you’ve already lived? Well I can tell you I got a super creepy feeling when I randomly selected “Ready to Burst” as my next read and it opened with the concept of “Spiralism” – I’d just complete “Triangle” by Hisaki Matsuura with the spiral theme and the concept of time not being linear or looped and the opening of this novel floored me:
More effective at setting each twig aquiver in the passing of waves than a pebble dropped into a pool of water, Spiralism defines life at the level of relations (colors, odors, sounds, signs, words) and historical connection (positionings in space and time). Not in a closed circuit, but tracing the path of the spiral. So rich that each new curve, wider and higher than the one before, expands the arc of one’s vision.
In perfect harmony with the whirlwind of the cosmos, the world of speed in which we evolve, from the greatest of human adventures to struggles for liberation, Spiralism aligns perfectly – in breadth and depth – with an atmosphere of explosive vertigo; it follows the movement that is at the very heart of all living things. It is a shattering of space. An exploding of time.
Re-creating wholes from mere details and secondary materials, the practice of Spiralism reconciles Art and Life through literature, and necessarily breaks with the hypocrisy of the Word. Re-cognition. Totality.
In this sense, as a means of expression – efficient, par excellence – Spiralism uses the Complete Genre, in which novelistic description, poetic breath, theatrical effect, narratives, stories, autobiographical sketches, and fiction all coexist harmoniously…
For my full review go to http://messybooker.blogspot.com
More effective at setting each twig aquiver in the passing of waves than a pebble dropped into a pool of water, Spiralism defines life at the level of relations (colors, odors, sounds, signs, words) and historical connection (positionings in space and time). Not in a closed circuit, but tracing the path of the spiral. So rich that each new curve, wider and higher than the one before, expands the arc of one’s vision.
In perfect harmony with the whirlwind of the cosmos, the world of speed in which we evolve, from the greatest of human adventures to struggles for liberation, Spiralism aligns perfectly – in breadth and depth – with an atmosphere of explosive vertigo; it follows the movement that is at the very heart of all living things. It is a shattering of space. An exploding of time.
Re-creating wholes from mere details and secondary materials, the practice of Spiralism reconciles Art and Life through literature, and necessarily breaks with the hypocrisy of the Word. Re-cognition. Totality.
In this sense, as a means of expression – efficient, par excellence – Spiralism uses the Complete Genre, in which novelistic description, poetic breath, theatrical effect, narratives, stories, autobiographical sketches, and fiction all coexist harmoniously…
For my full review go to http://messybooker.blogspot.com
Want to read
September 16, 2014Reviewed by The Complete Review
Read
February 15, 2016Insightful look into what some of life was like in Haiti during the Francois Duvalier regime.
May 13, 2019
A confusing mix of concepts and events, but with the ending confirming my suspicions I am keen to reread it and unpick what I struggled with!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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