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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
My Heart Beats Fast

My Heart Beats Fast

Chonville, Nadia

Paperback

Series: Global Black Writers in Translation

Mystery & Thriller

ISBN10: 0826508219
ISBN13: 9780826508218
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Published: Jan 15 2026
Pages: 144
Weight: 0.52
Height: 0.40 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Situated in contemporary Martinique, My Heart Beats Fast centers Kim, a young man accused of murdering his father, his sister's partner, and her young son. The narration braids three temporalities: the present of the trial; the recent past of Kim's youth shaped by Martinique's entanglement with late-stage capitalism and/as neocolonialism; and a longer duration that stretches back to slavery and the plantation, where Kim's Antillean matrilineal origins have their roots. This nonlinear narrative makes generous use of analepses, as the spirits of the ancestors whisper visions and memories to Kim's sister Edith, who attempts to understand what led her brother to commit such a horrific act. In addition to blending elements of realism and the marvelous, My Heart Beats Fast is written in a particularly poetic, urgent yet precise prose that has earned Nadia Chonville many accolades.

Chonville's novel is at the vanguard of a new Antillean literature that moves beyond créolité (the last identifiable literary movement in the Antillean canon) in several important ways: First, although it does reflect on the past (as indeed prescribed by the créolistes), it is firmly anchored in the present, which Chonville, a trained social scientist, captures unflinchingly. Second, it complexifies the Antilles gender landscape with characters whose intersectional realities are explored with depth and care.

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