Haiti, 1975. André Malraux climbs the heights of a remote hill overlooking the bay of Port-au-Prince to meet a small community of painters, made up of peasants and artisans, that has emerged there.
Malraux came to see with his own eyes the canvases of Saint-Soleil, that painting of miraculous strangeness inspired by vodou, which he describes as the most striking of the 20th century.
This novel brings back to life the beautiful and fruitful utopia that Saint-Soleil was, that little-known part of the history of modern art born in reaction to the excessive commodification of Haitian naive painting.
While the Duvalier dictatorship rages and the consequences of the American occupation remain burning, the raw art of Saint-Soleil will try to escape the sirens of the dollar by opening the way to a decolonial artistic practice, emancipated from every form of domination.
Luce Perez-Tejedor has lived in Haiti and Senegal.