Otelo

Trajedi youn kriz jalouzi

by Jan-Franns Gasyon


Formats

Softcover
$15.50
Softcover
$15.50

Book Details

Language : English
Publication Date : 10/27/2003

Format : Softcover
Dimensions : 5x8
Page Count : 160
ISBN : 9781410787392

About the Book

Maintaining the imaginative brilliance of Shakespeare, Jean-Frantz Gation recreates in the Caribbean island of Haiti the fictional world of Otelo, in which he describes the similarities that exist among the extraordinary complexities of human emotions, regardless of social and geographical settings. He shows how ordinary people cope with passions that love, pride, and jealousy breed. He also portrays how they struggle with biases, prejudices, and hatred that inevitably shape their behavior and, thus, their destiny.

Otelo is an intensively passionate journey into a landscape filled with violence-- domestic, social, and political. In a stark manner, the author brings out the ordeals suffered by the characters, as Otelo agonizes through his disenchantment, as Simòn, his wife, and Bètran, his lieutenant, are victimized because of their naiveté, and as the Machiavellian Asèn wallows unashamedly in disgrace and slander.

The author accomplishes a linguistic tour de force as he manages to transcend Shakespeare’s European cultural particularities and to situate the story in tropical, apparently paradisiacal, surroundings, beyond the constraint of Elizabethan English and into the phonetic emancipation of French Creole.

Jean-Frantz Gation hopes that Otelo, Trajedi youn kriz jalouzi encourage current and upcoming generations to pursue the cultural movement which will give French Creole its rightful place among other languages.


About the Author

Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where he grew up until the age of 17, Jean-Frantz Gation immigrated to the United States and earned a B.A. in journalism and a Master’s degree in English literature from Brooklyn College. For ten years his short stories, reviews, criticism, and articles, written in French, appeared in Haiti Observateur, a Brooklyn-based Haitian newspaper. Currently, he teaches English composition at City University of New York.