Cahier d´un retour au pays natal, de AimÉ CÉsaire

It is amazing to see how a strong personality takes on and is influenced by a work of great significance, that of Aimé Césaire. An astonishing production. Take the plunge...

- La Provence

Aimé Césaire’s fundamental work, the book-length poem, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, has deep roots in the social, historical and geographical reality of the interwar French West Indies. Then, France - and Europe in general -ruled over their colonial empires like masters, especially in Africa and the West Indies. The only free black countries were Haiti and Liberia. At that time, the racist theories of French diplomat and writer Compte de Gobineau on the inequality of the races fed the philosophy of the Third Reich. At the same time, Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sedar Senghor and Léon Damas created the (literary and political) Négritude movement and returned to black men and women their dignity as human beings. A rich, exuberant and energetic poetry which is also sharp and precise, surprising us with the originality of its sound and rhythm.