Home | Books By Year | Books from 2009
Island Beneath the Sea
Buy Island Beneath the Sea now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the book. And once you've experienced the book, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'Island Beneath the Sea' is a 2009 novel by Chilean author Isabel Allende. It was first published in the United States by HarperCollins.Alexandra Alter, 'Isabel Allende on Superstition and Memory', The Wall Street Journal, 23 April 2010, p. W4 The book was issued in 2009 in Spanish as 'La Isla Bajo el Mar', and was translated into English by Margaret Sayers Peden, who has translated all (except the first) of Allende's books into English. The story is set during the Haitian Revolution.
Plot
The story opens on the island of Saint-Domingue (current day La Hispaniola) in the late 18th century. Zarit (known as Tt) is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. As a young girl Tt is purchased by Violette, a mixed race courtesan, on behalf of Toulouse Valmorain, a Frenchman who has inherited his father's sugar plantation. Valmorain has dreams of financial success and is morally unopposed to slavery, though he dislikes punishing slaves himself, instead instructing his cruel overseer, Cambray, to administer the violence.
Upon Valmorain's marriage, Tt becomes his wife's personal slave and housekeeper. Valmorain's wife is fragile and superstitious and slowly succumbs to madness. As Valmorain's wife goes mad, Valmorain forces the teenage Tt into sexual servitude, which produces several illegitimate children. Spanning four decades, the narrative leaps between the social upheavals from the distant French Revolution through the immediate chaos of the Haitian Revolution, to a New Orleans fomenting with cultural change.
References
Buy Island Beneath the Sea now from Amazon
<-- Return to books from 2009