The marvelous adventures of Pierre Baptiste
Subtitle: father and mother, first and last
By: Patricia Eakins.
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 249
Description: The first-person narrative of a savant slave, Patricia Eakins's The Marvelous Adventures of Pierre Baptiste is one of the most imaginative novels in years. From the broadside title page, the reader is swept up by the linguistic fireworks of Eakins's autodidactic protagonist as he recounts "the tribulations of bondage in the sugar isles," his escape and how he was marooned, and his subsequent trials and adventures.

Here then is the account of the life and times of an African man of letters "whose ambitions were realized in strange and unexpected ways, yet who made peace with several gods and established a realm of equality & freedom & bounty in which no creature lives from another's labor." Pierre Baptiste emerges as an embodiment of all that is lost in a racist culture that refuses its own complexity, and thus its own redemption.
Notes: "Including the tribulations of bondage in the Sugar Isles, Pierre's escape from certain harm to his person, how he was marooned, his friends & religion, his true wife & fishy consorts, his children, born from his mouth like words, physics and metaphysics, cyclopedish histoire, flora, fauna, & mysteriosi, revenge and devotion, divinations, commonplace book."

"Being a true account of the life and times of an African man of letters, a Son of Guinée born into bondage, whose ambitions were realized in STRANGE AND UNEXPECTED WAYS, yet who made his PEACE with several gods and established a REALM of Equality & Freedom & Bounty, in which no creature lives from another's labor."