The Original 1939 Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

"As the translators assert, the purpose of this new translation is not 'to reveal what the poem ultimately means but rather how it was meant to be read in 1939.' And unlike other translators who sought to capture the essence of the revolutionary spirit of the text, Arnold and Eshleman remain faithful to the rhythmic and incantatory power of the original text. A rare gift in translated poetry, this authentic rendering of the text makes the poem's mesmerizing effect accessible to those without French. Highly recommended (for) all readers."—A.J. Guillaume Jr., Choice

"American translators A. James Arnold and Clayton Eshleman bring alive in the English language the original 1939 version of Aimé Césaire's well-known Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Notebook of a Return to the Native Land). Dense in its illusions and complex in structure or diction, the work earns its place as one of the more important literary writings of our twentieth century—both in its cultural contexts and linguistic innovations. For scholars and informed readers, this edition offers fresh possibilities of interpretation for this document and its history as an anticolonialist manifesto, an anthem of sorts, and a representative topology of the collective colonial black consciousness of that time."—Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Poetry Salzburg Review

"A stellar addition to the Césaire lexicon, which by finally establishing the substance of the 1939 edition, allows a clearer vision and a greater appreciation of the groundbreaking nature of the Cahier, or the substantive differences that shaped subsequent editions, and of the arc of Aimé Césaire's remarkable poetic voice."—H. Adlai Murdoch, Research in African Literatures

"Aimé Césaire's work is by far one of the most outstanding tour-de-force in French literature emanating from the Caribbean. The texture, the beauty and the centrality of the work is set in a Caribbean milieu and firmly contextualized in the concept of negritude, of which Aimé Césaire is a co-creator. The book will be appreciated for its depth, structure, and tactile renditions of the social impediments that strangled all of us whose ancestry heralds from Africa, but who were sequenced in various parts of the Caribbean."—S.B. Jones-Hendrickson, The Caribbean Writer

"As the translators assert, the purpose of this new translation is not 'to reveal what the poem ultimately means but rather how it was meant to be read in 1939.' And unlike other translators who sought to capture the essence of the revolutionary spirit of the text, Arnold and Eshleman remain faithful to the rhythmic and incantatory power of the original text. A rare gift in translated poetry, this authentic rendering of the text makes the poem's mesmerizing effect accessible to those without French. Highly recommended (for) all readers."—A.J. Guillaume Jr., Choice