The Maroons

$18.00

by Louis Timagène Houat

Translated from the French by Aqiil Gopee with Jeffrey Diteman

Introduced by Shenaz Patel (translated by Lisa Ducasse)

The first English translation of a rediscovered classic, and the only known novel by Black abolitionist and political exile Louis Timagène Houat, The Maroons is a fervid account of slavery and escape on nineteenth-century Réunion Island.

Paperback ISBN: 9781632063557
Publication date: February 20, 2024

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ABOUT THE BOOK

Frême is a young African man forced into slavery on Réunion, an island east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Plagued by memories of his childhood sweetheart, a white woman named Marie, Frême seeks her out—but when they are persecuted for their love, the two flee into the forest. There they meet other “maroons”: formerly enslaved people and courageous rebels who have chosen freedom at the risk of their lives.

Now available in English for the first time, The Maroons highlights slavery’s abject conditions under the French empire, and attests to the widespread phenomenon of enslaved people escaping captivity to forge a new life beyond the reach of so-called “civilization.” Banned by colonial authorities at the time of its publication in 1844, the book fell into obscurity for over a century before its rediscovery in the 1970s. Since its first reissue, the novel has been recognized for its extraordinary historical significance and literary quality.

Presented here in a sensitive translation by Aqiil Gopee with Jeffrey Diteman, and with a keen introduction by journalist and author Shenaz Patel, The Maroons is a vital resource for rethinking the nineteenth-century canon, and a fascinating read on the struggle for freedom and social justice.

PRAISE FOR THE MAROONS

“Louis Timagène Houat’s harrowing, hopeful abolition novel The Maroons introduces a crucial Black narrative to the English canon. Though painful at times, The Maroons shines a necessary spotlight on the abhorrent cruelty of the not-so-distant history of the Indian Ocean slave trade. Lush descriptions of the island scenery are juxtaposed with the appalling but all too real cruelty delivered at the hands of the ‘masters.’ The novel was also groundbreaking for its time: it foresees a better future even while it toils in its agonized present. In the face of what appears to be interminable cruelty, its characters still hope that love from fellow human beings will cut through and dismantle generations of prejudice and misguided hatred.”

— Natalie Wollenzien, Foreword Reviews

“As I read this first contemporary account of the dark and brutal beginnings of our islands’ history, I felt heartbroken, not only to be so vividly reminded of the inhuman savagery with which the enslaved were treated, but also for the author’s vain hope of an egalitarian society soon to be born. Nearly two centuries later, can his protagonists’ dream of becoming the masters of [their] own bodies be said to have come true? I do not think so: the times of barbarity are not over. Reading the last pages, I saw the ashes of the past still smoldering all about me.”

— Ananda Devi, author of Eve Out of Her Ruins

“This illuminating novel from Houat (1809–1883), which was banned by French colonial authorities upon its 1844 publication for its negative portrayal of slavery, marks his English-language debut. . . . It’s enriched by the lively and substantial supplemental material, particularly Mauritian author Shenaz Patel’s introduction, which contextualizes the novel with an account of Houat’s lifelong persecution for his abolitionist views. The episodic narrative stands first and foremost as an important historical document.”

— Publisher’s Weekly

“All that is born of the arts and humanities worth its weight poses an inquiry that we must keep returning to even as it risks our discomfort. The Maroons is one such piece—birthed from its own tangled web of silence and suppression, yet shining light on the realities of the African diaspora outside of our familiar geographic and historical scope. The questions it demanded that we sit with well over a century ago still hold within this current environment: What does freedom cost? And is true emancipation when one is willing to risk one’s own freedom and life to free others? Faced with every master that goes by different names in our modern world, from the institutional to capitalistic, we must ask ourselves: Which side of the equation do we want to be on, as we think about how to respond as ‘the masters’ abuses escalate’?”

— Shanta Lee, author of GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA and Black Metamorphoses

“In their luminous translation of The Maroons, Gopee & Diteman introduce for the first time in English the literary and political work of Louis Timagène Houat. Long exiled from the annals of French literature, the novel is a fiery condemnation of the atrocities of slavery and the hypocrisies of empire, a tale of antiracist love and solidarity, a manifesto of revolutionary liberation. . . . The Maroons rescues from historical oblivion the experiences and aspirations of enslaved people on the island of La Réunion in the nineteenth century, staging maroons as makers and thinkers of history under the dehumanizing conditions of colonial violence. Immersing us in the simultaneous beauty and horror of the island’s landscapes, the novel takes us on a journey across a layered topography of anti-racist resistance and possibility dreamt up by victims of colonial violence. Capturing in vivid prose Houat’s uncompromising literary style, the translators are also acutely mindful of the novel’s relevance to a broader historical geography of freedom struggles. In opening the novel to an English-speaking public, Gopee & Diteman actively labor to unearth lines of fight from the Indian Ocean and connect them to a global archipelago of fugitivity, whose gravity has often centered on the Black Atlantic. In offering this translation, they gift The Maroons to the political archive of decolonial thought. As it conjures the promise of antiracist futures struggled for by oppressed people in the past, this translation adds a new stroke of inspiration in a present where racialized people around the world continue to confront the afterlives of unfreedom.”

— François G. Richard, Associate Professor in the Departments of Anthropology; Race, Diaspora & Indigeneity; and Romance Languages & Literatures at the University of Chicago

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Louis Timagène Houat was a French writer and physician. Originally from Bourbon Island, now known as La Réunion, he was the author of the first novel in Réunionese literature, Les Marrons, which he published in Paris in 1844.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATORs

Aqiil Gopee is a Mauritian writer and poet with degrees in Religion from Amherst College and Harvard, where he also trained in archaeology. He has published numerous short stories and poems in Mauritius, France and the U.S., having won the 1st prize of prestigious Prix du Jeune Écrivain in 2023 for his short-story “Insectarium," published by Buchet-Chastel (Paris). He reads classical Arabic, Attic Greek, Akkadian and Egyptian, and along with a first novel, he is currently working on a literary translation of the Qur'ān.

Jeffrey Diteman is a literary scholar and translator working in French, Spanish, and English. He has translated the writing of Pablo Martín Sánchez, Raymond Queneau, and Amalialú Posso Figueroa, and regularly translates journalism and children's literature. His academic research focuses on depictions of cross-cultural influence in narratives of extended kinship from Latin America.

ABOUT the introducer

Shenaz Patel is a journalist and writer from the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean.

As a journalist, she has been a Reuter fellow and worked as editor in chief of a political newspaper before setting up the arts, culture and society section of Week End, a leading Mauritian weekly newspaper. Patel is the author of four novels, including Le silence des Chagos published in France by Editions de l’Olivier-Le Seuil and in English by Restless Books as The Silence of the Chagos (2019). She has written numerous short stories in French and Mauritian Creole as well as five graphic novels, two plays, and translations.

Patel was an International Writers Program (IWP) Honorary Fellow in the U.S. in 2016, a fellow at the Hutchins Centre-W.E.B du Bois Institute at Harvard University for the Spring semester 2018, and acted as mentor for the Young Women Writers Mentorship Programme of the IWP in 2019. She staged a production of Niamain in 2019 (the story of an African princess enslaved in the 18th century). She is currently working on a novel based on the stories of women who have fought for freedom at different levels. She is also working on a documentary related to the quest of identity through DNA testing.

ABOUT Other contributors

Lisa Ducasse is a spoken word artist, singer, and translator from Mauritius, now living in Paris. She released her first poetry collection, Midnight Sunburn, in April 2017, and her first EP, Louvoie, in September 2018. She writes in French and in English, her two native languages, and her work mostly stems from and builds around the sometimes lived, sometimes imagined life of a traveler and the various homes one finds through encounters, moments, and in places all around the world. She specializes in translation for the screen and the translation of contemporary poetry.