The Loneliness of Angels

Offering a richly nuanced portrayal of Haiti as a place of ethnic and cultural complexity, this novel explores the important role of spirituality in Caribbean life and culture. Told through multiple voices in a nonlinear fashion, the narrative unfolds through the perspectives of Ruth, a Haitian-Syrian merchant, who recounts her young adulthood and final days as she intuits her imminent death; Catherine, a professional pianist living in Paris, who travels home to Haiti upon hearing of her aunt Ruth's murder; Rose, Catherine's mother and an empath, who is believed to have committed suicide in Canadian exile in reaction to the worst years of the Duvalier regime; Romulus, a once famous Konpa singer and an addict, who, released by rebels from a Port-au-Prince jail, searches for his redemption; and Elsie, an Irish, working-class seer who emigrates to Haiti in 1847 in search of a new mystic who will guide them all. Traversing the terrains of Port-au-Prince middle-class life, working-class French Canada, expatriate Paris, and the peat bogs of famine-stricken Ireland—and tracing lives that cross boundaries of time and place—this is a deeply absorbing portrayal of a fragmented community whose deepest connections lie in a shared sense of spirituality.

Myriam J. A. Chancy is a professor of English at the University of Cincinnati and the author of Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels by Haitian Women, The Scorpion's Claw, and Spirit of Haiti, which was short-listed in the Best First Book Category for the Commonwealth Prize 2004.