A Knife in the Sky

Book excerpt: This gritty translated novel locates the power of resistance in women, and in the pen. In A KNIFE IN THE SKY, a journalist's decision to talk and a student's desire to know puts them in the crosshairs of a murderous dictatorship. As the novel opens, Mika is dangerously engaged in the pursuit of truth during Haiti's first Duvalier regime. Nearly thirty years later, her granddaughter Junon witnesses the repressive dynasty's unravelling. Brutal, terrifying, and hopeful, A KNIFE IN THE SKY is an homage to those who have survived tyranny. Originally published by Éditions du Remue-mènage in 2015 as Femmes au temps des carnassiers, this book, like most of the author's oeuvre, is preoccupied with colonial imposition. Marie-Célie Agnant writes on the ruthlessness of a dictatorship, on humanity, and locates the strength and power of resistance in women. "The work is shaped through a rich, crafted language that creates an acute awareness of what duvalierism was. This considerable effort is not a catharsis, nor an anamnesis; rather, it is the heart-rending testimony of the suffering, the inner struggles and the stand against Duvalierism of a woman caught in the midst of a regime that redefined the heights of horror."--Alain Saint-Victor, Potomitan "Marie-Célie Agnant's work is noble: she names and narrates terrible emotions and chaos, yet always in a sensitive and poetic way. The fate of the women in her books is not sealed by the torment of their daily lives, but in the humanity of each one. Through these portraits of women--courageous women, women who are full of hope, even without underestimating the weight on their shoulders--Agnant shows us the pain they carry from one generation to the next."--Le Fil Rouge Fiction.