'The undisputed masterpiece of négritude and a poetic milestone of anti-colonialism' Guardian

'We shall speak. We shall sing. We shall shout.'

This blazing autobiographical poem by the founder of the négritude movement became a rallying cry for decolonisation when it appeared in 1939. Following one man's return from Europe to his homeland of Martinique, it is a reckoning with the trauma of slavery and exploitation, and a triumphant anthem for Black identity, one which reclaims and remakes language itself.

'Nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of this time' André Breton

'A Césaire poem explodes and whirls about itself like a rocket, suns burst forth whirling and exploding' Jean-Paul Sartre

'The most influential Francophone Caribbean writer of his generation' Independent

Translated by John Berger and Anna Bostock

"The most influential Francophone Caribbean writer of his generation" - Independent

"Aime Césaire's brooding exploration of Negritude bristles with the energetic, unique qualities of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself . . . [Césaire's] protean lyric, filled with historical allusions, serves to exorcise individual and collective self-hatreds engendered by the psychological trauma of slavery and its aftermath" - San Francisco Chronicle

"One of the most powerful French poets of the century" - New York Times Book Review

"The poem pulls no punches. Now tremulous, now grating, the improvised text drums and jabs in spasmodic phrases and slogans. Each encounter, each twist of idiom, thrusts itself into the reader's mind as a fierce challenge to understand and to empathize" - The Times Literary Supplement

"A more razor-sharp encapsulation of the situation of African slavery could not be found" - Quarterly Conversation

"Amazing... This level of sophistication is partly why Césaire became a world citizen, mayor, and Martinique's ambassador to the French Parliament" - Ebony