THE VORTEX FAMILY

This 1982 novel studies Haiti in the late 1940s, between regimes deferentially affiliated with US influences, as lived by the title family--whose sons and daughters are a bit too mechanically representative of the Haitian bourgeoisie's various professional classes and of a predictable spectrum of political sentiments. The country itself accordingly seems more alive than do these people, but in patriarch Sylvain Vortex and in the remembered figure of his exiled daughter Astrid, M‚tellus has memorably incarnated the character and spirit of a proud and resilient country.