“From a virtuoso of Haitian literature comes this stunning whorl of history, revolution, love, and politics. With vivid authority, Jean-Claude Fignolé offers an intriguing and painful saga of a colonial family moving through history, painting portraits of many of the towering figures from Haiti’s colonial past. He situates a living, pulsing Haiti directly where it should be: at the axis of the twirling vortex of post-seventeenth-century Western history. It’s a pleasure to read this book, and a lesson, as well, about how we can interpret the legacy of the crowded Atlantic drama in our day.”

- Amy Wilentz, author of, Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti

“What good fortune to have Jean-Claude Fignolé’s unique voice brought before us at last in this masterpiece of translation by Kaiama L. Glover and Laurent Dubois. Sensual and moving, multivalent and dynamic, Fignolé’s <i>Quiet Dawn</i> takes on new life; and, like Haiti itself, invites us to live through ‘the fatality’ of a unique ‘history’—the gripping portrait of a place where, as his translators write, the ‘past is literally everywhere at once.’

- Colin Dayan, author of, Animal Quintet: A Southern Memoir