Glissant's third novel [Malemort] may be viewed as a polymorphous narrative as well as a compendium of the author's aesthetic and ideological tenets. Like most of his writing, Malemort deals with the condition of Glissant's homeland, Martinique, and therewith ramifies into a multi-directional search for a definition of Antillanité, a concept that Glissant wants to substitute for the much exalted and maligned Négritude. Among other things, Antillanité is predicated on the recognition of a collective consciousness of the Caribbean peoples, still to be distilled and instilled. If, by and large, Glissant's Renaudot-prize-winning first novel, La Lézarde, can be considered as an exploration of Martinican space in its dichotomous opposites of mountain/plain, sea/land, country/city, his second novel, Le Quatrième Siècle, is laid out on a predominantly temporal matrix, evoking "une vision prophétique du passé," the past which has been lost and...