Publisher Description

Cola Debrot's My Black Sister and Boeli van Leeuwen's A Stranger on Earth are two pivotal works from the early period of postcolonial Dutch-language fiction from the Dutch Caribbean. Each portrays different aspects of the predicament of postcolonial identity, gender, race, and politics in the vein best known as tropic existentialism. Founding Fictions of the Dutch Caribbean is suitable for courses on Caribbean literature and postcolonial literature, and will be of great interest to readers of fiction in general.

Author Biography

The Translators: Olga E. Rojer teaches in the Department of Language and Foreign Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. She received her Ph.D. in German Studies from the University of Maryland. She is the author of Exile in Argentina: 1933-1945 (Peter Lang, 1989). Her collaborative translations with Joseph O. Aimone of Dutch and Papiamentu literature from the Dutch Caribbean have been published widely. Joseph O. Aimone teaches in the Department of English at the University of Houston Downtown. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Davis. His collaborative translations with Olga E. Rojer of Dutch and Papiamentu literature from the Dutch Carribbean have been published widely. He has also published poetry and literary criticism.

Review

This book of painstaking translation signifies an increasingly flourishing and highly welcomed interest in the literature of the Dutch Caribbean. It will delight readers with its poignant renderings of the sheer poetry of its source texts, their lush tropical imagination, and searing exposures of conflicted postcolonial subjectivity. This is a book you will read over and over again, and then again. (Maurice A. Lee, Editor, 'Journal of Caribbean Literatures'; Dean, College of Liberal Arts, University of Central Arkansas) 'Founding Fictions of the Dutch Caribbean' brings to English language readers well-wrought translations of two seminal writers of the Dutch Caribbean, Cola Debrot and Boeli van Leeuwen. Widely acclaimed by readers of Dutch, evincing powerful dimensions of postcolonial reality and imagination, these are works of world significance with their rare beauty, sultry grace, and profound human compassion. (Aart G. Broek, Author of 'Het Zilt van de Passaten' and 'De Kleur van mijn Eiland')

Review Text

This book of painstaking translation signifies an increasingly flourishing and highly welcomed interest in the literature of the Dutch Caribbean. It will delight readers with its poignant renderings of the sheer poetry of its source texts, their lush tropical imagination, and searing exposures of conflicted postcolonial subjectivity. This is a book you will read over and over again, and then again. (Maurice A. Lee, Editor, 'Journal of Caribbean Literatures'; Dean, College of Liberal Arts, University of Central Arkansas) 'Founding Fictions of the Dutch Caribbean' brings to English language readers well-wrought translations of two seminal writers of the Dutch Caribbean, Cola Debrot and Boeli van Leeuwen. Widely acclaimed by readers of Dutch, evincing powerful dimensions of postcolonial reality and imagination, these are works of world significance with their rare beauty, sultry grace, and profound human compassion. (Aart G. Broek, Author of 'Het Zilt van de Passaten' and 'De Kleur van mijn Eiland')

Review Quote

This book of painstaking translation signifies an increasingly flourishing and highly welcomed interest in the literature of the Dutch Caribbean. It will delight readers with its poignant renderings of the sheer poetry of its source texts, their lush tropical imagination, and searing exposures of conflicted postcolonial subjectivity. This is a book you will read over and over again, and then again. (Maurice A. Lee, Editor, 'Journal of Caribbean Literatures'; Dean, College of Liberal Arts, University of Central Arkansas) 'Founding Fictions of the Dutch Caribbean' brings to English language readers well-wrought translations of two seminal writers of the Dutch Caribbean, Cola Debrot and Boeli van Leeuwen. Widely acclaimed by readers of Dutch, evincing powerful dimensions of postcolonial reality and imagination, these are works of world significance with their rare beauty, sultry grace, and profound human compassion. (Aart G. Broek, Author of 'Het Zilt van de Passaten' and 'De Kleur van mijn Eiland')

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