The return of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier to Haiti gives me a chance to note a great book about the nation's decades-long political turmoil. I read Edwidge Danticat's "The Dew Breaker" early last year, to get a better feel for the island nation that had just been rocked by a major earthquake.
The novel takes place before "Baby Doc" took over the dictatorship of his father, "Papa Doc" Duvalier. But it really doesn't matter. Danticat's tale could be written of almost any authortarian regime -- in Africa, Asia or the islands. The book's power comes from interlocking stories that describe the human fallout from Haiti's troubles. Danticat gradually unfurls a mystery surrounding the main character, and writes of him: "He hadn't been a famous 'dew breaker,' or torturer, anyway, just one of hundreds who had done their job so well that their victims were never able to speak of them again."
In a Read Street post last year, I mentioned other significant books about Haiti's troubled political history. Among them: Graham Greene's "The Comedians," Rene Philoctete's "Massacre River" and Madison Smartt Bell's trilogy, "All Souls Rising," "Master of the Crossroads" and "The Stone That The Builder Refused." Read any one of them and the unfolding news about Duvalier will become more real.