Ouregano: A37623 (Folio)

Paule Constant captures the subtle colors of loneliness in black and white colonial Africa, inviting the reader into a beautiful and dangerous landscape where savanna and forest confront unsurpassable obstacles. Miller's translation provides a unique entry for English-language readers into the extraordinary reaches of contemporary French literature.--Annie Dillard

With a fine grasp of human nature, Paule Constant's novel Ouregano explores the human condition from a fascinating perspective, French Africa in the 1950s, through characters that resonate with familiarity. We know them, or people like them. She tells the story of seven-year-old Tiffany and the people around her, the small French community of administrators and professionals, and the African villagers within the colonial regime, with an ironic attention to detail that bring their complex world to life. Constant's style of dispensing with quotation marks, while creating a slight hesitation initially, causes the reader to focus quickly, and Margot Miller's exceptional translation allows the reader to move into that world with no hesitation at all.--Jean Auel

Paule Constant dissects bigotry with cynical precision. OUREGANO is a sharp and corrosive portrait, a dark but lucid view of human emotions and obsessions and, in passing, a chronicle of the rape and murder of a continent. Margot Miller delivers a translation full of local color, as literary as it can be without betraying her own language.--Pablo Dal Monte, Translator, member of the American Translators Association

Margot Miller's sensitive translation deftly renders Constant's shrewd and intense physical and moral observation, communicating the crisp, ironic tone and free-flowing interpenetration of thoughts in this warped society without confusing the reader. Miller has made an invaluable contribution in bringing OUREGANO to the English-language audience that admired Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible.--Julie Edelson, author of "The Fat Friend"

Le malheur du monde peut d'abord être le malheur d'un enfant, capable de ressentir l'humanité qui l'entoure, les événements, les lieux à la façon d'un médium. Tel est le cas de Tiffany, huit ans, qui vit à Ouregano, un cercle administratif d'Afrique noire, à la fin de l'époque coloniale. Abandonnée à elle-même par une mère sans tendresse et par un père qui a le goût de la guerre, la petite fille enregistre à travers les manifestations du pouvoir et du racisme la détresse des adultes. Mais un drame vient bouleverser l'ordre des choses, un assassinat contraint les adultes à dévoiler la violence et la lâcheté qui les habitent. La présence de l'enfant leur est désormais intolérable. Tiffany s'enfuit. Pour l'enfant-médium, l'heure de la délivrance va-t-elle enfin sonner ?