Novel
How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired
Comment faire l'amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer
Dany Laferrière · 1985
Synopsis
Montreal, a sweltering summer in the eighties. In a wretched room on Rue Saint-Denis, near Carré Saint-Louis, two young Black men live penniless. Bouba, lying on the sofa, listens to jazz, reads the Koran and holds Freud to be the inventor of jazz; the narrator, from Haiti, types a novel on an old Remington and seduces white McGill students whom he christens with nicknames, Miz Literature and others, playing on the clichés attributed to him.
Context
Its author's first book, published in Montreal by VLB in 1985, after years of factory work. The title caused a scandal: several media refused to print it, and major American dailies kept it at a distance. David Homel's English translation appeared in Toronto in 1987, at first under a shortened title, and Jacques W. Benoit made a film from it in 1989. The text was revised for the 2015 edition.
Who it is for
A short novel, in a fast and funny language, made up of brief scenes; the title is a provocation.
Prizes and reception
An immediate success that made its author known, it has been translated into eleven languages.
Sources for this page 9
The pages consulted to check this page.