Out of the Hell of Haiti: <i>Island Beneath the Sea</i> by Isabel Allende

Allende powerfully evokes the events of the 18th century in, about a slave's journey to freedom through the jungles of Haiti, neighborhoods of Cuba and households of New Orleans.
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Island Beneath the Sea, Isabel Allende's new novel, is a searing exploration of the viciousness of slavery in the eighteenth century and the gross contradiction between its brutalizing forces and the lofty ideals of the Enlightenment. At the same time that concepts of self-determination and human rights were gaining in waves of revolution begun in America and igniting in France, the trafficking of Africans was also growing, setting a course of hypocrisy and conflict whose legacy is still felt today. The slave trade was particularly brutal in Haiti under French rule, where the cheapness of slaves meant they were a commodity easily replaced and therefore ruthlessly abused: "it was more profitable to replace slaves than to treat them with consideration." So began the cyclical history of cruelty and survival that is the story of Haiti. Will it take an earthquake of epic proportions to smash that cycle flat, and allow survival to grow into prosperity, dignity, and peace?

Saint Domingue, as Haiti was called under the French, was a colony world-renowned for its cruel treatment of slaves. It was a place where slave mothers would rather kill their children than allow them to suffer alive, and where runaway slaves preferred death to the barbarous torture that awaited them if captured. White slave owners either became depraved with lust for violence and rape, or closed their eyes to how overseers handled the slaves in the interest of churning out more and more sugar for a sucrose-addled world. No one made it out of the hell of Haiti unscathed, not the slaves, not the free blacks, not the maroons nor the mulattoes nor the whites. The best that could be hoped for was the "island beneath the sea" of the title, a place to go after the suffering of life ends and the peace of death begins: "we go galloping together to visit my dead ones on the island beneath the sea. That is how it is."

Allende powerfully evokes the historical events that rocked the late eighteenth century, sending tsunami-sized waves of change around the world. The enthralling, blood-chilling, and heart-breaking story of Zarite connects the links between the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the revolt of the Haitian slaves led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, the sale of Louisiana to the United States, and the rising influence of the Abolition movement. Zarite is the offspring of a Guinean woman and the white sailor who raped her; saved from murder by her own mother, Zarite is sold off to a household in Saint Domingue. When the slave rebellions in Haiti begin, it is up to her to save her white master/rapist, her children, and the white child of the master. She begins a long and hard-fought journey to freedom through the jungles of Haiti, the neighborhoods of Cuba, and the households of New Orleans. She is assisted in her quest by a series of resilient women, including Tante Rose, a seer and medicine woman who knows more about cures and illnesses than European-trained doctors; Violette, a courtesan with her eye on future; and Adele, the black (and therefore unacknowledged) wife of a white man. She is also helped along by a few caring men, including Gambo, a warrior under Toussaint L'Ouverture, and Pere Antoine, a saintly priest. What drives Zarite forward is her unshakable belief in her own right -- and the right of her children -- to be free.

Island Beneath the Sea is a historical novel which works brilliantly in conveying the cyclone that was the eighteenth century, a collision of the forces of enlightenment against the forces of capitalism, greed, and prejudice. It is also a love story about long-suffering but strong women and the men who love, abuse, subject, and above all, desperately need them.

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