Title:
Windward
Heights (Click to order on-line) Author: Maryse Conde,Richard Philcox (Translator) Publisher: Soho Press, Incorporated Format: Trade Cloth "Cond's story is rich and colorful and glorious. It sprawls over continents and centuries to find its way into the reader's heart." Maya Angelou |
From The Publisher:
"Caribbean novelist Maryse Conde reimagines Emily Bronte's passionate novel,
Wuthering Heights, as a tale of obsessive love between the "African" Rayze and
Cathy, the wild, sensuous mulatto daughter of the man who takes him in, raises him, but
whose treatment goads Rayze into rebellious flight. In Cuba Rayze makes his fortune, but
upon his return he discovers Cathy has wed the weak scion of a socially prominent Creole
family that scorns the dark-haired beauty. Rayze determines to be avenged for the loss of
his love. His vengeance succeeds into the next generation, haunting both Cathy's daughter
and his son."--BOOK JACKET. "In characteristic lush prose, Conde transposes
Wuthering Heights to her native island of Guadeloupe, retaining the emotional power of the
original while showing us Caribbean society in the wake of emancipation."--BOOK
JACKET.
Kirkus Review
WINDWARD HEIGHTS ($24.00; Aug. 18; 364 pp.; 1-56947-161-4). Guadeloupian-born novelist
Cond� (The Last of the African Kings, 1997, etc.) rises above her usual accusatory
lushness in this rich reimagining of Emily Bront�'s Wuthering Heights: the lavish tale
(recounted by several narrators) of ``a mulatto girl as poor as a church mouse madly in
love with a black boy even poorer than herself.'' For once, Cond�'s tiresomely explicit
condemnations of racial and ethnic prejudice and injustice are subordinated to a real
story, dominated by vivid characters (her Heathcliff, the Byronic-demonic Rayz� and his
several hot-blooded sons are especially flamboyant romantic figures)and enriched by
frequent illustrations of the ``voodoo'' religion of Santeria. A Third World ``Duel in the
Sun'': over the top, as always, but nevertheless one of its author's most involving and
satisfying novels.