Literary places in Fort-de-France

Texaco

Patrick Chamoiseau

Marie-Sophie Laborieux tells an urban planner sent to raze her shantytown the whole 150-year history of her family and of Texaco, the improvised quarter she founded on company land above Fort-de-France, from slavery through emancipation to the modern city. Chamoiseau maps the real Martinique: the tin-and-timber quarter of Texaco clinging to the hillside, the city of Fort-de-France below, the plantations of the enslaved past, and old Saint-Pierre before Mont Pelée destroyed it in 1902.

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