The life of Medard Aribot of Martinique óartist, convict, madman, legend óspans much of the twentieth century. Born in 1901 when slavery was a living memory, Medard was allegedly sent to a French penal colony for carving a bust of a colonial official that rioters hoisted overhead during a 1925 massacre. Today, the peculiar house he built for himself late in life is a major tourist attraction in Martinique. With an exciting combination of scholarship and storytelling, award-winning anthropologist Richard Price takes us on a search for the real Medard. Using the Diamant massacre and the life of Aribot as emblems of Martinique's transition from a colonial society to a modern society, the author shows how the fishing village he encountered on his first trip to Martinique in 1962 has been transformed by a heavily assisted welfare-based consumer economy.
