"La colonie du nouveau monde : Condé's Pessimistic Views of a Caribbean Utopian Community."

Since the late seventies, Haitians have migrated toward the Eastern Caribbean and sometimes as far as the Guianas. Today, Haitian communities are present almost everywhere whithin the circum-Caribbean region. Isolated and estranged from the local population, Haitians try to survive and assist their families left at home. Invisible and humiliated migrants, they appear in fictional works very often as symbols of the predicament of the region. This paper examine the part played by a group of Haitians who join a community led by a Guadeloupean ' guru' in Maryse Condé's La colonie du nouveau monde. It seeks to identify the symbolic meaning ascribed to their experience by Condé.