Review of "Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History" by C.L.R. James Illustrated by Sakina Karimjee and Nic Watts

As I write here quite often, I'm not a big fan of graphic novels. I find them hard to read, distracting and non-linear- maybe I have an old-fashioned attention span. This one felt different, perhaps because it's adapted from a play, and it reads like the script of a good play. I am a big fan of CLR James, and his intelligence and his willingness to deal with difficult and contradictory elements (like the slave-owning planters' enthusiasm for the French Revolution) shines through.

It's still bloody confusing though, and hard to keep track of all the currents - the revolting slaves loyal to the kings of France and Spain, the interventions of the British and the Americans, the shifting loyalties of the mulattoes and the free blacks. I'm glad there was a list of dramatis personae at the beginning, and I referred back to it more than once.

Still hard to read of Toussaint's betrayal and death without a lump in the throat, and the graphic novel removes many of the details that are in James's book The Black Jacobins.

A great introduction to the Haitian revolution though, with a good bibliography.