Jacques Stephen Alexis is a descendant of Jean Jacques Dessalines, one of the founders of the Haitian Republic, the first black republic in the world. He was born in 1922 in Gonaives in a family with strong national and cultural traditions. “Compere General Soleil” (“General Sun My Brother”) was his first novel, written in 1955. He later wrote two other novels: “Les Arbres Musiciens” (“The Musician Trees”, no translations available) and “L’espace d’un cillement” (“In the flicker of an eyelid”).
Alexis, a socialist, was the founder a political party. He fled into exile during the violent dictatorship of Francois Duvalier because of his political involvement. In 1961, he tried to come back to Haiti to organize the revolution against Duvalier. He was captured in the North of Haiti where he landed on a boat with a few other revolutionaries. He was tortured and never to be seen again, probably assassinated by the Duvalier militia. His revolutionary struggle is well documented in “Le Prix Du Sang” by Bernard Diederich (which I highly recommend).
In “Compere General Soleil”, Alexis tells the story of Hilarius Hilarion, a young black man living in poor Port-au-Prince. Hilarius is epileptic and that makes it very hard for him to be accepted into a society which believes that his sickness is a sign of the devil. Out of hunger, he steals food and gets arrested. He is thrown in jail. There, he meets a communist militant, Jacques Roumel, whose strong and thoughtful words gives him hope and helps him make it through his hard times in jail. When he gets out, he finds a job thanks to a reference from Roumel. He meets some of Roumel’s communist friends. One of them, Dr. Jean Michel, becomes a close friend and helps him cure his epilepsy. Hilarius is forever grateful to him and starts to associate more and more with Jean Michel and his Marxist friends, who encouraged him to start going to school to learn how to read and write. Though he never joins the party, he calls himself “a friend of the party”.
During this time, Hilarion falls in love with Claire Heureuse and they get married. They live a decent life until the Artibonite river floods and starts a national penury. The political situation is getting worst. The poor are starving while the politicians and bourgeoisie are living in luxury. The words of Jean Michel about Lenin and Stalin start to make more sense to Hilarius as he watches his situation get worst everyday. Just when he thinks that things can’t go any worse, their house catches fire and the factory where he worked closes.
Hilarion decides to move to the Dominican Republic with Claire Heureuse to work at a sugar cane plantation. There, he lives with his cousin Josaphat. Claire Heureuse gives birth to Desire and Hilarion is finally happy. However, the work is hard and they are treated like slaves. The workers start ‘la huelga’ (a strike) to get a pay raise. They obtain it but shortly after the brutal dictator, Trujillo, asks his army to kill all Haitians working in the plantations. In what turns out to be a genocide, everyone that cannot pronounce “perehil” correctly (the haitians) gets killed. Hilarion and Claire Heureuse get some help from the communist friends they made in the Dominican Republic but Desire dies while they try to escape. Hit by a bullet, Hilarion dies laying in the sun: Compere General Soleil.
This book is a Haitian classic and I am ashamed I only read it recently. Alexis is such great writer. He describes the scenes with such imagery and beautiful metaphors that you can enjoy reading long descriptions without being bored. The story borrows facts from history such as the 1937 genocide (more info here) and the Artibonite flooding which makes it so real. At times, the reader feels as if this is not a work of fiction, but the life of a real man… and it is, because there were and are still plenty of Hilarions living today. Check out “The Price Of Sugar” or “Ghosts of Cite Soleil” if you need proof.
