Roger Celestin — The Delicate Beast - with Peter Constantine

In the 1950s Tropical Republic, a boy lives amid opulence and privilege, spending days at the beach or in the cool hills above the sweltering capital, enjoying leisurely Sunday lunches around the family compound's swimming pool. That is, until the reign of The Mortician begins, unleashing unimaginable horrors that bring his childhood idyll to an end. Narrowly escaping the violent fate visited on so many of his fellow citizens, he and his brother follow their parents into exile in the United States where they must start a new life. But as he grows, he never feels at home, and leaves his family to travel across Europe and outrun the ghosts of the past.A searing novel of a life lived in the shadow of history, The Delicate Beast portrays the persistent, pernicious legacy of political violence.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781954276369?ic_referral=jdEpGRi3QHgMPbFsLUgBURr6YAGNxEMpjcSV4oNoX7swM-qR4E2zdUby79MGnHRfjku0gsqZrPMkJxJOV16-ewOnoxlpavcPUQePZa_xRKyw1UyNTuHUfGy5P37p3034x1KdrQRoger Celestin was born in Haiti, emigrated to the United States at the age of eleven, and is Professor Emeritus of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. The Delicate Beast is his first novel. He lives in Manhattan.Celestin is in conversation with Peter Constantine. Constantine is a literary translator, writer, and activist for a diversified linguistic ecosystem in our world. Among his recent translations into English are works by Augustine, Rousseau, Machiavelli, Gogol and Tolstoy. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the PEN Translation Prize and the National Translation Award. He is Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Connecticut and Publisher of World Poetry Books.*recorded 2/7/2025