Hailed by Milan Kundera as “an heir of Joyce and Kafka,” Prix Goncourt winner Patrick Chamoiseau is among the leading Francophone writers today. With most of his novels having appeared in English, this book opens a new window on his oeuvre. A moving poetic essay that bears witness to the forgotten history of the French penal colony in French Guiana, French Guiana: Memory Traces of the Penal Colony (Guyane: Traces-Mémoires du bagne) is accompanied by more than sixty evocative color photographs by Rodolphe Hammadi and translated, here for the first time, deftly by Matt Reeck.