Edouard Glissant is an accomplished and influential novelist and poet, and has recently emerged as a major theorist in Caribbean studies and post-colonial literature. In this first full-length study of Glissant's creative and theoretical work J. Michael Dash examines his poems, novels, plays and essays in the context of modern French literary movements and the post-negritude Caribbean situation, providing both a useful introduction to, and a challenging assessment of, Glissant's work to date. Dash shows how Glissant has focused in an unprecedented way on the Caribbean in terms of the diverse and hybrid culture that has been created in the region, and how his ideas on a cross-cultural politics are the shaping force in the francophone Caribbean 'Creolite' movement.

"Dash does a masterly job of discussing the important themes, images, and structures of Glissant's work as a poet, a novelist, and an essayist. As well as concise summaries of the critical reaction, Dash, who has translated two of Glissant's books, provides good translations for the numerous, useful quotations, making his book a fine introduction to a difficult but outstandimg writer." Adele King, World Literature Today