SOURCE: "Nothing to Lose But Their Chains," in Washington Post Book World, Vol. XXV, No. 45, November 5, 1995, p. 4.

Below, Garner marvels at the erudition and literary skill of All Souls' Rising, finding that Bell's "gifts have never been more fully on display."

Madison Smartt Bell's sprawling and masterful new novel, about political and racial turmoil in French colonial Haiti during the late 18th century, is not for the squeamish. The book's first scene is an exacting depiction of the crucifixion of a black female slave by a wealthy French landowner. That's merely a primer. In the ensuing 200 pages or so, up until about the novel's midway point, we learn much, much more about the terrors regularly inflicted upon African slaves by their French masters, including the fact that "it was nothing to lop an ear or gouge an eye, even to cut off a hand, thrust a burning stake...