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Title: A novel about race hatred, not Haiti
Review: Having recently read C.L.R. James's fascinating, Marxist account of the Haiti slave revolt, "Black Jacobins", I was excited to learn of a literate, fictional account of the same subject. Now that I've read it, I agree it is literate, but it is more an exploration of the depths of race hatred than a treatment of the Haiti uprising. Most telling is Bell's decision to develop the character of Toussaint only slightly, preferring instead to focus mostly on a fictional white doctor. How Toussaint and his illiterate allies accomplished one of the greatest miliary and political upsets in history is of little interest to Bell. The goal of the book seems to be to impress upon the reader to what appalling depths mankind, black and white, will stoop when a conflict is racial. Although Bell paints many shockingly violent scenes, he didn't convince me that racial forms of hatred are uniquely virulent.
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