Abstract
Pierre Clitandre was born in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince in 1954. In the early 1970s, he became involved in the opposition journalism which was highly critical of President ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier's corrupt and dictatorial regime. In 1978 he took over the editorship of the weekly Le Petit Samedi Soir, which was often the most outspoken of the opposition publications. In November 1980 President Duvalier purged the opposition — politicians, journalists and intellectuals — and Clitandre, amongst many others, was forced into exile. As well as a journalist, Clitandre is a talented novelist. The following extract is from his first novel Cathedrale du Mois d' Août (‘August Cathedral’, published in Paris by Editions Syros in 1982). The title refers to the old bus with which the novel's hero John struggles to make a living. In addition to his adventures, the book presents a fresco of the miserable existence of the Haitian peasants who are forced off the land into the wretched shanty slums that ring Port-au-Prince. Pierre Clitandre now lives in New York, where he edits a newspaper for the numerous Haitian exile community and is completing a second novel, Baron le Vivant, about the drama of the Haitian ‘boat people’ who were forced to flee their country.