Willard Wood

In a country plagued by dictatorship and insurrection, poverty and corruption, where police officers and gang members become hard to distinguish, art provides a sense of meaning and respite. As people from all walks of life protest their tyrannical leader, a painter tries to reconcile the brutal violence he sees with the beauty of his lover. A wealthy industrialist''s kidnapping ties back to his past with a humble laundress from the seaside. A lovesick servant girl turns to magic to win her master''s heart. Having escaped the shantytowns he grew up in, a wannabe James Bond feels their pull again when he gets involved with an alluring young woman-and her pimp. Written with the masterful language of a poet, and filled with characters at once lifelike and mythical, Lyonel Trouillot''s story collection creates a multifaceted portrait of modern Haiti.

In the wake of Donald Trump''s election, renowned medievalist Patrick Boucheron delivered a powerful, probing series of lectures on ''political fictions'' in the context of rising authoritarianism and populism. Adapted here for the first time in English, they offer key insights into how we arrived at our current global moment and what history can teach us about moving forward. Long before Trump parlayed his reality TV character into a presidential victory with the MAGA movement, aspiring rulers have used the art of storytelling and the power of fable to control others. Discussing seminal works from Machiavelli''s The Prince and Hobbes''s Leviathan to Orwell''s 1984 and the writings of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, Boucheron explores the profound interconnectedness of political theory and fiction, and the tension between politics and the political.