This is my first Condé, and though I have heard of at least one of her earlier books, I did not put them together when this showed up on the NBA for Translated Lit longlist.

Condé can tell a story. This novel features stories within the story as we learn about different characters' backgrounds. I would get so caught up in the story-within-the story that I forgot there was a larger story.

This is also another novel about trauma and war. In a fictional west African country (not Mali, or Senegal, or Ghana, with named fictional cities). In Lebanon. In Haiti. And about life and grief, in Mali, in Guadeloupe, in Haiti. It is about race/color, national origin, class--and how each affects the other and how one might be accepted in a particular place and by whom.

And it is about love and friendship--how Babakar, widowed in Africa, moved to his much-loved late mother's home of Guadeloupe. A skilled obstetrician, he holds few friends close--and those he does tend to die of trauma or old age. But he keeps on, saving mothers and babies, and then claiming one orphan for his own. ( )

This rich and sharply observant novel showcases the tangled geography of displacement and survival and the drive for humanity that ties us all together through the narratives of three characters.

Babakar Traore is a Malian currently living in Guadeloupe haunted by his mother appearing in his dreams. As an obstetrician, Traore called upon one night to deliver a baby of an undocumented Haitian woman who dies in childbirth and decides to raise the child, Anais, and honor the mother’s last words for her daughter to be raised in Haiti. Accompanying, Traore and Anais will be the Haitian Movar, and the Palestinian Fouad.

Once again Maryse Conde affirms herself as a consummate storyteller. It is through the background stories of the characters looking at the delicate interior conflicts that haunt each of them that we understand displacement and exiles that is necessary due to political/ethnic conflicts, climate disasters, and lingering effects of colonialism that are done for the sake of survival.
Conde successfully integrates the past and present histories of the stateless men so their desperate search for Anais’s family exposes the richness and depth beyond the obvious of one’s ordinary life.

Kudos to the translator Richard Philcox for his skilled translation and providing the nuanced aspects of the diverse cultures/languages as the locales of the book changes between Mali, Guadeloupe, Lebanon, and Haiti.

Overall, this is an entertaining and informative read with themes of sanctity of friendship, the power of love, and the complicated nature of family that lifted my spirits and renewed my hope at this time of such division in the world.

Thanks to GoodReads and the publisher for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. ( )

I'd been hoping for more from Waiting for the Waters to Rise. Part of that may be the book itself; part of it is almost certainly my preconceptions and personal biases. Maryse Condé takes readers into day-to-day life in some of the poorer Caribbean nations, particular Haiti. That journey is more than worthwhile. Waiting for the Waters to Rise compelled me to look at Haitian history and to take some next steps from my generalized knowledge to a fuller, more detailed understanding.

What didn't work for me (and I want to emphasize the *me,* since I am not some arbitrator of all things literary) was the novel's structure. What Condé gives us is sections that alternate between omniscient narration and first person, with each first-person section being a lengthy tale of a single individual's life. This works to present a variety of characters, but it doesn't really work in terms of narrative arc.

I found Waiting for the Waters to Rise to be definitely worth reading, but it's not reading that carries one along via language or structure. It's the depiction of present-day, or at least recent, Haitian life that keeps the reader going.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss; the opinions are my own. ( )

De levens van en de vriendschap tussen drie mannen ( )