Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History - C. L. R. James

A STIRRING GRAPHIC NOVEL OF THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION This impassioned and beautifully drawn book dramatically recounts 'one of the great epics of revolutionary struggle and achievement'--the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803. It is also the stirring--and incredible--story of Toussaint Louverture, a man born into slavery who rose to become the revolt's indispensable leader. Perhaps more than any other figure from the Age of Revolution, he gave voice to a truly universal call for liberty and equality.

Written by C. L. R. James, the Trinidadian revolutionary whose classic study Black Jacobins has been in print for eighty-five years and is the definitive history of the revolution, this book's text itself has a fascinating history. It's drawn from a play that opened in London in 1936, with Paul Robeson in the title role, the first time black actors starred on the British stage in a play by a black playwright. The script was lost for almost seventy years, then a draft copy was found among James's archives, and now this extraordinary drama has been turned into a graphic novel by artists Nic Watts and Sakina Karimjee.

This page-turning visual narrative surrounds Toussaint with fiery radicals like Haitian leader Dessalines and intransigent French like Napoleon. Above all, the book portrays the world-changing force of the enslaved Haitian people, for, as James famously wrote, Toussaint did not make the revolution. It was the revolution that made Toussaint.