Romancero aux étoiles

One of twenty copies on pure vellum, after five copies on Holland paper and ten copies on labor vellum.

There, in Haiti, is a miserable little island where in the evening, at the wake, the "composes" and storytellers joust with verve under the wide-eyed eyes of the children, under the tired but radiant pupils of the adults. They sing of dreams and wonders.
It is the nephew and disciple of the Prince of the "composes", the storyteller student, the writer himself, who wanted to tell us these stories. Throughout this Romancero aux étoiles however, two Sambas, two storytellers, the author and his master the Old Caribbean Wind, compete in invention by drawing inspiration from the tales of tradition, from the legend of the time of the great Caciques - when soursops, cashew apples, apricots bore fruit for all -, from the myth of Queen Anacaona ( Dit de la Fleur d'Or ), from the fables of Bouqui and Malice, to arrive at the modern short story that Alexis tries, as a good student having benefited from the lessons of oral tradition.
True and beautiful stories! That of the Sous-lieutenant enchanté , Wheelbarrow, who was bewitched by a woman with tumultuous black hair; that of the sparkling Chronique d'un Faux-Amour , a real little novel in a pure fantasy vein, which gives voice to the prettiest fiancée transformed into a "zombie" on her wedding day.
Spoken poetry, supernatural fantasy, unusual humor with variable geometry and trompe-l'oeil in Le Roi des Songes , where the Trans-Dreaming-Air-Lines carries us towards a divine utopia... It is above all, for our wonder, about preventing the old stories from being forgotten, but it is also about adding new stories to the heritage, exploring new paths that Alexis, from 1960, tries for the last time to decipher, marrying reality to fantasy where the art of yesteryear and always adapts flexibly to the most modern reality, that of the Caribbean today.

Jacques-Stephen Alexis

Haitian novelist, poet and politician born in 1922 in Gonaïves, Jacques-Stéphen Alexis is the founder of the "Parti d'entente populaire" and opposed François Duvalier. In 1961, trying to land in Haiti with a small commando, he was captured, reported missing but probably assassinated.