Masters of the Dew
The genre of the peasant novel in Haiti reaches back to the nineteenth century and this is one of the outstanding examples. Manuel returns to his native village after working on a sugar plantation in Cuba only to discover that it is stricken by a drought and divided by a family feud. He attacks the resignation endemic among his people by preaching the kind of political awareness and solidarity he has learned in Cuba. He goes on to illustrate his ideas in a tangible way by finding water and bringing it to the fields through the collective labor of the villagers. In this political fable, Roumain is careful to create an authentic environment and credible characters. Readers will be emotionally moved as well as ideologically persuaded.
About the Author
Jacques Roumain, the son of a wealthy Haitian family, was born in Port-au-Prince in 1907. After being educated in Europe he identified with the resistance movement against the American occupation. He started Le Revue Indigene and published various books including La Montagne Ensorcelee (1931). He founded the Haitian Communist Party in 1934, was arrested and, after three years in prison, travelled in Europe and the United States until his return in 1941 when he established the Bureau d'Ethnologie in an effort to legitimise the study of Haiti's peasantry. He was sent in 1943 to the Haitian Embassy in Mexico. It was there that he completed this book Gouverneurs de la Rosee a few months before his sudden death in 1944.
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