Chronicle of Seven Paupers

The seven paupers who tell this chronicle are 'jobbers' — jacks of all trades — on Martinique. They observe life on the island from their place at the vegetable market, where a colorful mix of blacks, mestizos, Syrians, night devils and zombies gather every day, where people fight for their existence, where the women traders rule the roost and the men devote themselves mainly to rum. The hero of the chronicle is Pipi, master of the wheelbarrow. His illegal boat trips during the war, his struggle with the slave past, his triumphs as a miracle gardener and his fateful encounter with a night woman: the jobbers have experienced it all up close. They report on it in a compelling way: humor, cruelty, poetry, compassion and melancholy alternate in this account of a changing world, in which there is less and less room for jobbers.