GLISSANT, DOUARD

born Sept. 21, 1928, Le Lamentin, Martinique black French-speaking West Indian poet and novelist who belonged to the literary Africanism movement. Glissant was a disciple and fellow countryman of the poet Aim Csaire, who founded the Negritude movement to promote an African culture free of all colonial influences. Glissant recorded the awakening of colonized peoples in his verse collections Un Champ d'les (1953; An Expanse of Islands) and Les Indes (1956; The Indies). His novel La Lzarde (1958; The Crack; Eng. trans. The Ripening) won him the Prix Thophraste Renaudot (1958). In Le Quatrime Sicle (1962; The Fourth Century), he retraced the history of slavery in Martinique and the rise of a generation of young West Indians, trained in European universities, who would reclaim their land. The narrative structure of his novel Malemort (1975) interweaves the colonial history of Martinique with an examination of contemporary experience, a technique he used again in La case du commandeur (1981; The Commander's Cabin). Other verse collections include Boises (1977; Woods) and Pays rv, pays rel (1985; Countries Dreamed, Countries Real). His play Monsieur Toussaint (published 1961) is about the Haitian hero Toussaint-Louverture.