A Sun to Be Sewn

An NPR Book of the Day

“A slim, brutal novel…beautifully poetic.” —NPR, All Things Considered

“D’Amérique unfolds a panorama of pain and courage, death and desire, telling all in a wounded lyrical style that haunts the reader long after the novel’s end…Kehou does a mesmerizing job at recasting this beautiful, heartbreaking tale into English.” —Asymptote

“‘Being Haitian means to be born in blood,’ Jean D’Amérique has written. A Sun to Be Sewn, like D’Amérique’s other novels, poetry, and theatrical works, immerses us in that blood, but he refuses to let his characters be silenced. His words haunt us with the subtlety, nuance, and lyricism that our beautiful and aching country not only inspires, but demands. Jean D’Amérique is a very talented writer and A Sun to Be Sewn is an unforgettable novel.” —Edwidge Danticat, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory

“Jean D’Amérique’s prose has a musical rhythm, making each sentence of A Sun to Be Sewn come alive. He paints a portrait of a child’s world with the delicate touch of a poet. A necessary and stunning rendering of contemporary Haiti, childhood, and what it means to survive, A Sun to Be Sewn is told through a remarkable voice unlike any other, imparting the reader with images that will not soon be forgotten.” —Leila Mottley, New York Times bestselling author of Nightcrawling

“As timely a work as it is timeless, Jean D’Amérique’s A Sun to Be Sewn, translated with an expert touch by Thierry Kehou, plunges the reader into the tumultuous world of its young female Haitian protagonist through language so lyrical and abrim with imagery each sentence impresses itself on the mind. Amidst the tragic, D’Amérique offers a tale of survival, and reminds us of literature’s incomparable representational power.” —John Keene, National Book Award–winning author of Punks: New & Selected Poems

“A Shakespearean debut novel, with the tragic beauty of a Géricault painting. Stunning.” —Le Monde des livres

“The genius of Jean D’Amérique is having successfully used a language at once marvelously poetic and very hard. I couldn’t pull myself away, I read it in one sitting.” —Célimène Daudet, France Culture, Affaires culturelles

“Tenderness and violence alternate in this book that describes the ‘gangsterization’ of neighborhoods in the Haitian capital.” —Le Point