Dézafi

by Frankétienne, Jean Jonassaint (Afterword), Asselin Charles (Translator)

Dezafi is no ordinary zombie novel. In the hands of the great Haitian author known simply as Franketienne, zombification takes on a symbolic dimension that stands as a potent commentary on a country haunted by a history of slavery. Now this dynamic new translation brings this touchstone in Haitian literature to English-language readers for the first time.

Written in a provocative experimental style, with a myriad of voices and combining myth, poetry, allegory, magical realism, and social realism, Dezafi tells the tale of a plantation that is run and worked by zombies for the financial benefit of the living owner. The owner's daughter falls in love with the zombie overseer and facilitates his transformation back into fully human form, leading to a rebellion that challenges the oppressive imbalance that had robbed the workers of their spirit. With the walking dead and bloody cockfights (the "dezafi" of the title) as cultural metaphors for Haitian existence, Franketienne's novel is ultimately a powerful allegory of political and social liberation.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Zombies, Dark

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Frankétienne 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.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frankétienne’s Dézafi was the first Kreyòl novel published in Haiti, and the first Kreyòl novel ever translated into a foreign language. That this is a novel first and foremost centered on language, specifically Kreyòl, joined with the fact of such a wide gulf existing between Kreyòl and English, makes one wonder how such a translation even exists. And yet it does, and moreover seems to be pretty fantastic. Having only the most rudimentary grasp of Kreyòl (I roughly translated a few health communication materials years back), I have no idea how closely this comes to representing the Kreyòl version. But as a text in English it reads well, and its experimental narrative techniques (characteristic of the Spiralist literary collective to which Frankétienne belonged) do an admirable job of conveying the multiplicity of Frankétienne’s themes and inquiries within what is a relatively brief number of pages.

The novel consists of a cast of first-person voices, unnamed and often collective, interleaved with multiple threads of third-person narration, displayed on the page using a hybrid typography including various typefaces and sizes, italics, boldface, indentations, and slashes to divide text. The style alternates between standard narrative prose and various forms of traditional Haitian writing, including philosophical poetry, aphorisms, and short discursive sentences, each set off by the use of the different typographical conventions. What results is a range of possible ways to read the novel, following individual threads established either by character, voice, typographical style, or literary form.

As to content, the basic structure revolves around a village under the control of a sadistic Vodou priest named Sintil who makes villagers into zombis to grow rice in the swamp. The zombis endure horrific torture at the hands of Sintil and his henchman Zofè. The brutality makes for difficult reading at times, as is the case with any text, fictional or otherwise, that seeks to expose the bald truth of human enslavement. The tension mounts throughout the novel as different voices braid together into a tightrope for the reader to walk. Multiple ‘micronarratives’ develop and edge the greater narrative forward. Cockfights figure prominently in both literal and symbolic terms. Frankétienne also incorporates a lot of Vodou practices and mythology into the text. Most of these terms remain untranslated, but there is a glossary in the back as well as a thorough notes section.

Ultimately this is the kind of book best approached through repeated readings, not read all the way through in a relatively short period of time, as I did. It is dense and its polyphonic nature defies unilateral digestion and interpretation. Alas, it is another library book so not one I will be revisiting again anytime soon. I am intrigued, though, by the idea of the alternate reading modes proposed in the afterword. So I may yet return to it in the future.

[peg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Longlisted for the 2019 Best Translated Book Award, this book by Haitian writer Frankétienne was originally published in 1975, the first in Haitian “Kreyol”.
There is an excellent introduction that explains its place in the SPIRALIST MOVEMENT, a literary technique that renders reality in a chaotic and non-linear fashion. It helped to keep this in mind as I read through a whirlwind of plantation life, cockfights and zombies, all of which became clearer in a second reading.

[Stefan Boshkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sa se tre byen. Mwen te ap kontann li sa.

[Jack]

“Death may come to us anytime; our bodies will rot in the earth. But a solid idea does not simply melt away. An idea rooted in life’s core will not fade into darkness. An idea that has a soul sparkles, jumps over walls, fords rivers, flies over flames” (88).

[Manuel Abreu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stuff. Has qualities of a sacred / profane prose poem on a sentence-by-sentence level, and it's dripping with abstract pathos, but ultimately it's a liberation narrative hinging on the Haitian zombi figure. The text is also significant historically, as the first published Kreyol novel, and a canonical example of the post-war Haitian Spiralism movement of art. There are themes of the double, arrested development, the idea of community, the idea of lineage or root, and the retrieval of the folk culture (in the Haitian case, Vodun and rural Catholic aesthetics). We spend a lot of time with Santil and his zombi horde, but also a lot of time in the local town under Santil's sway. Some interesting characters in the town, whose conditions often mirror the servitude of the zombis (but this also means they are potential comrades in arms against Santil). There are, yes, moments where the language is a bit abstract or purple, or where things drag, hence 4 not 5, but this is to be forgiven when a novel is capable otherwise of operating swimmingly at this register. Recommended

[T Davidovsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

An allegorical zombie novel about slavery, oppression, and tyranny.

Plot is periphery. It’s something to vaguely gesture at, while the core focus remains on conveying a series of disparate scenes and feelings that all capture a particularly oppressive atmosphere—a single village terrorized and enslaved by one man and his magic. It’s poetic, mesmerizing, heady, experimental, abstract, and painfully believable. For anyone who is willing to parse (and I mean parse) through and reread some of the more confusing parts, it’s beautifully written, and there is good payoff at the end when the plot finally does braid itself together. Definitely a challenge, and mileage may vary on whether it's worth it, but there aren't many Haitian Creole fantasy books translated in English. This might actually be the only one. And for that reason alone, it's worth checking out.

[Thomas Pugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evocative and atmospheric. 75%

I loved this novel. Normally I find experimental writing of this length can get a bit wearisome. But Dézafi is lyrical, with a pulsating beat that drives it forward so that, even on the parts that are hard to follow on a literal sense (and there were quite a few) it was a joy to read.
Kudos must go to the translator of this edition (Asselin Charles), I don't speak Haitian Creole but even so this feels authentic, with natural flowing and very poetic language.

[David Barrera Fuentes · Rating 3 out of 5]

lo admito, no terminé las últimas páginas. sepan perdonar

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dézafi is unlike anything I’ve read before. It’s a good representation of why I started this project at all, as it depicted a popular speculative trope (zombies), but within a milieu and storytelling tradition I knew nothing about. It’s about life and death, freedom and oppression, and love. It’s literary, compelling, and full of some beautiful verse and prose, though it does take some persistence to get through. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to see what else a zombie novel can be.

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