In her first novel, Nadia Chonville, born in Martinique in 1989, takes us on a family story as bewitching as it is bloody where we meet witches and female ghosts. A murderous critique of colonialism and patriarchy, My heart is beating fast is told from the perspective of a woman whose six-year-old son was strangled by his transgender brother. “And when in the heart of the tropical night he gets up drunk and hits the sidewalk, he walks, gets lost, and drowns his drunken eye in the iron of the moon. But here it is: he hasn’t drunk enough to forget the look of the man he killed. Already perceived as a monster by the neighborhood, the brother acted in this way in order to avenge all the women of his lineage for the violence inflicted on them by the men and to prevent history from repeating itself. Punctuated with passages in Creole, unfortunately not translated, this novel tinged with fantasy, where one clings to beauty despite the invading horror, is based on a language that is sometimes lyrical, sometimes cruel.
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