The Island beneath the Sea – Isabel Allnede

2009, 462 pages, translated from Spanish
Haiti is the first and only nation in the world that was founded as a result of slave uprising. The book takes place around the time of the rebel in Haiti. It follows two main characters: Valmorain, a French man who arrived to the Saint Domingue, as Haiti was called then, as a young man, to visit his father’s plantation, thinking he’ll be back to his good life in Paris with his mother and sisters, but finds himself stuck in the plantation, and Zarite, called Tete, daughter of a black slave brought from Africa and one of the sailors on the ship that brought her, who ends up in Valmorain’s plantation. The book follows them in the events preceding the revolution, during the stormy years of the revolution and the years after that.
The story presents well the extreme cruelty of the slavery on the island. It is easy to understand why it is the only nation that was founded due to slave rebellion. They had nothing to lose. Work was hard, food was scarce, and when the slaves died after a few years, new slaves from Africa replaced them. So the island was full of people who knew they have nothing to hope for but slow and cruel death, people who knew freedom and would do anything to gain it again.
Another issue in the book is the relationship between white man and black or mulatto women. It shows all kinds of these relationships, from forced rape, to open love and marriage, of shamed and hidden love, to cope with society rules and codes.
The book is also full of fascinating discussions about moral, slavery and the conflicts between the right thing to do and the circumstances forced by social and economical terms. Valmorain is not presented as a bad person, at least not at first, and it is fascinating to see how he surrenders to what everybody is saying and doing, silencing his conscious. In that the book is so relevant, and people like Valmorain can be found anywhere, with new issues replacing the slavery.
I enjoyed the book in general. It brings to life a time in history I didn’t know much about, and it is fascinating at times, though to my taste it spreads along a too long period of time. I prefer books that focus on a relatively short period of time, enabling to get into the characters and the events, feeling the change and growth in the characters as they happen, instead of taking a distance while years go by and people change. But people who like family sagas that spread along many years will surely enjoy this book a lot.