This summer (2014) Markus Wiener Publishers presented a paperback English-language edition of Stella by Émeric Bergeaud. With an introduction by Luis Duno-Gottberg and translation by Adriana Umaña Hossman, the volume is now available with the title Stella: The Epic Saga of the Haitian Revolution.

Description: Written while the author was exiled to St. Thomas [now one of the U.S. Virgin Islands], due to his alleged participation in an attempt to assassinate the black emperor Faustin I (Soulouque), the work can be read as the first foundational novel of Haiti. It is a mythical retelling of the establishment of the Haitian nation. This narrative presents not only the birth, through revolution, of Haiti as an independent nation but also the strife between political factions in Bergeaud’s contemporary Haiti, including that between blacks and mulattoes in the struggle to control Haiti. Stella vividly introduces readers to the tale of revolt and revolution that eventually led to the creation of a free black nation.

Émeric Bergeaud (1818–1858) was a Haitian novelist. His best-known work, Stella, was the first Haitian novel. Born in Cayes, he served as Secretary to Jerome Maximilien Borgella and later participated in a revolt against President Soulouque. Exiled to Saint Thomas, it was there that he wrote the novel Stella.

Luis Duno-Gottberg (Associate Professor of Film and Caribbean Studies, Rice University) is the author of a book on Albert Camus and two books and numerous articles on slavery and race relations in the Caribbean.

Adriana Umaña Hossman (Rice University) teaches French; her research interests include twentieth- and twenty-first-century French and Francophone literature, particularly that of Haiti and the French Antilles.

For more information, see http://www.markuswiener.com/?p=4841

For more on the author, see http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/bergeaud.html