Sudhir Hazareesingh, 2020
Read: 2020–24
Edition read: Allen Lane, 2021, 464 pages
Non-fiction, history
Take #2 (or #3?)
Toussaint Louverture (or, if you like, the slightly more dashing Toussaint L‘Ouverture) led the only successful slave revolution since, well, the other Spartacus, freeing Haiti from French slavery. Nonetheless, he seems to have remained a generally unknown figure until this book came out in 2020 to much acclaim (I found out about him via a Swans song, which doesn’t exactly scream ‘well known’ either).
I found this a hard read. There is a narrative, but it feels more like a loose structuring tool/device for details about Louverture and the ideas surrounding him, rather than a narrative-driven piece of history.
Although I appreciate that ideas and events can drive history as much, if not more so, than people, it ends up feeling academic.
Louverture and the Haitian slave uprising is one hell of a story – it’s just how it is told. I am still interested in Louverture and the Haitian Revolution, but think I will try a different book next time. I even tried to read it via a set number of pages per day, but, ultimately…
…DNF
Worth reading: No
Worth re-reading? No
The Page Count 
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