The Catastrophe | The Creole Years vol. 1

This historical novel recounts the eruption of Mount Pelée, in Martinique, which destroyed Saint-Pierre in 1902. This disaster caused 30,000 victims. This volume is the first of Michel Tauriac 's cult trilogy devoted to life in Martinique in this emblematic city of the West Indies at the beginning of the ^20th century. It is one of the most beautiful social documentaries on Saint-Pierre before the disaster.

Also available in ebook

-----

At the end of the 19th century, Saint-Pierre was a literate town with a flourishing trade ^and a hectic worldly life. The fine intellectual flower of Martinique flourishes in endless contests relayed by a sharp and fierce pen press. Racial hatred divides, love too. In this "little Paris of the West Indies", the different strata of society rub shoulders, oppose and confront each other.

In this context, the lights that bloody the sky and the bursts that shake the earth intrigue and worry, without taking precedence over political quarrels exacerbated by the imminence of the most bipolarized ballot of the Third Republic.

A family of white planters, an ambitious mulatto deputy and a host of characters, most of them real, are heading towards a destiny they cannot imagine: on May 8, 1902, Mount Pelée exploded, erasing time. the city and 30,000 of its inhabitants in one breath. This tragedy, which will dismay the whole world, will mark history in the same way as the destruction of Pompeii in the year 79.

"An impressive fresco of St. Peter's before the 1902 eruption"
Raphael Confident