Heading South
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
On the sun-drenched island of Haiti in the 1970s, under the shadow of “Baby Doc” Duvalier’s notorious regime, locals eke out an existence as servants, bartenders and panderers to the white elite. Fanfan, Charlie, and Legba, aware of the draw of their adolescent, black bodies, seduce rich, middle-aged white tourists looking for respite from their colourless jobs and marriages.
These “relationships” mirror the power struggle inherent in all transactions in Port-au-Prince’s seedy back streets. Heading South takes us into the world of artists, rappers, Voodoo priests, hotel owners, uptight Parisian journalists and partner-swapping Haitian lovers, all desperately trying to balance happiness with survival.
Made into an award-winning film starring Charlotte Rampling, this provocative novel, translated for the first time into English, explores the lines between sexual liberation and exploitation, artistic freedom and appropriation, independence and colonialism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Laferri re's scintillating American debut recounts the sexual adventures of an eclectic cast of characters under the regime of "Baby Doc" Duvalier, charting their desire for sex and power as they navigate the complexities of life in 1970s Haiti. Roughly at the center is 17-year-old Fanfan, who enjoys seducing the bourgeois women who employ his seamstress mother. Elsewhere, Christina, wife of the American cultural attach in Port-au-Prince, lives in self-imposed semi-isolation as her husband chases Haitian girls and her teenage daughter takes sexual advantage of the hired help. Meanwhile, women sex tourists from New York, London, Paris, and Boston awaken to lives that feel at once unreal and yet truer than anything back home. One of them, a Parisian journalist, is tricked into marrying a voodoo god and becomes imprisoned on the island; another deserts her husband and children to live in a cottage with a farmer. In each storylike chapter, Laferri re reveals the workings of race, class, and colonialism in Haitian society and the manipulative sexual power that underlies it all.
