SOURCE: A review of La vie scélérate, in World Literature Today, Vol. 62, No. 3, Summer, 1988, p. 498.

In the following review, Bruner positively assesses La vie scélérate.

La vie scélérate, though not as large a narrative as the two-volume Ségou, shares many of its characteristics. Seen through the eyes of a member of a large and powerful family, it reveals a historic epoch, its beliefs, conflicts, myths, and deeds. Beginning with the grandfather from Guadeloupe, it takes the reader through the early years of the building of the Panama Canal, where Jamaicans, American blacks, Guadeloupeans, and other exploited laborers struggle and die, or sometimes survive. It moves to San Francisco, to Jamaica, to France, as various members of the grandfather's burgeoning family gain power, quarrel among themselves, yet retain a family identity. Some become Marcus Garveyites, some become race-mixers.

As in Condé's...