Jean-Claude Fignolé’s Quiet Dawn tells an enthralling story of Haiti’s transition from French colony to independent Black republic. The swirling, multilayered novel provides intimate portraits of an eighteenth-century slaveholder, his wife, and their enslaved laborers set against the devastating backdrop of slavery and revolution. Into this Gothic colonial tale, Fignolé interweaves a series of tragic events involving a present-day French nun doing penance for the sins of her ancestors. One of the few contemporary Haitian novels to explicitly grapple with Haiti’s revolution, Quiet Dawn foregrounds issues of race, power, the continuing legacy of historical trauma, and the unresolved tensions between the past and present. Published in French in 1990 and appearing here in English for the first time, Quiet Dawn forcefully pushes against the silencing of Haiti’s past, belying its title to depict a clamorous Atlantic world that comprises Europe, Africa, and the vast expanse of the Americas.

Jean-Claude Fignolé (1941–2017) was a Haitian author, poet, cofounder of Haiti’s Spiralist literary movement, and the author of several novels in French.

Laurent Dubois is John L. Nau III Bicentennial Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy at the University of Virginia.

Kaiama L. Glover is Professor of African American Studies and French at Yale University.