MOONBATH, BY YANICK LAHENS, TRANSLATED BY EMILY GOGOLAK
Moonbath follows the Haitian community of Anse Bleue through generations of political and personal turmoil. The novel, narrated in collective first person, is propelled by the alternately bleak and redemptive stories of the Lafleur family, whose children come of age under tyranny. In a time when men are rewarded for viciousness, matriarch Ermancia teaches her daughter to trust in silence, to never betray the “quiet lands that man never penetrated, except with the ignorance of a conqueror.” In this world, Lahens tells us, power resides with the wealthy and corrupt but also in dreams and the invisible. Religion, nature, and human existence are inextricable in a community desolated by the erasure and abuse of its most vulnerable members.
The novel’s compelling momentum in the first half devolves into frenetic pacing in the second, while its real poignancy lies in the reveries of its narrators, who find precious a world often darkly shrouded. The novel’s mythic atmosphere is enhanced by Lahens’ meditations on personified nature, and Emily Gogolak’s translation preserves a bare and moving voice throughout: “Only later did we see death spread over us like a frightful sun.” The community finds refuge in the redemptive power of the unseen, which gives voice to the voiceless, in this life or the next.
