This is an autobiographical novel about a little boy going to school in Fort-de-France, Martinique, and it's all about how colonial education brainwashes colonized children.

"Youngsters,

"Of the West Indies, of French Guyana, of New Caledonia, of Reunion, of Mauritius, of Rodriguez and other Mascarenes, of Corsica, of Brittany, of Normandy, of Alsace, of the Basque country, of Provence, of Africa, of the four corners of the Orient, of all national territories, of all far-flung dominions, of all outlying posts of empires or federations, you who have had to face a colonial school, yes, you who in other ways are still confronting one today, and you who will face this challenge tomorrow in some other guise: this voice of bitter laughter at the One and Only—a firmly centered voice challenging all centers, a voice beyond all home countries and peacefully diversal in opposition to the universal—is raised in your name." (Epigraph)

Colonial education is the pits. It makes you lose your identity, and it estranges you from your culture and your native land. Patrick Chamoiseau tells us that his novel is going to be a counter-discourse to that colonial education.

He's not just talking about places we normally think of as colonies, though. He's also talking about places like Brittany and Normandy and Alsace. These are places in France... but they weren't always part of France. They were also "colonies" at some point, just like parts of the Caribbean and Africa. Colonization isn't just the story of Europeans exploiting people in far-flung corners of the globe. It can happen anywhere.

This sentence is gigantic. Why is it so long? Well, try reading it out loud. It's a long sentence, sure, but it's powerful and full of rhythm. The power of the sentence reflects the power of Chamoiseau's voice, as someone speaking a counter-discourse to colonialism. It's a call for solidarity, and it's also a sentence of comfort to downtrodden people. That's a lot of work for one sentence to do, but it probably wouldn't have the same impact if it were broke up into shorter fragments.