I had nothing but the present and stories with no beginningsTwenty-year-old Cécé is used to the sound of gunfire. Growing up in the Cité of Divine Power, where bodies are buried amid whispers during the day and the nights resound with the shots of rival gangs, Cécé knows that to survive you have to invent the present every second.On Facebook, she's 'Cécé la Flamme' and her followers are skyrocketing. She posts pictures of her feet, her food, make-up, the dead bodies in the street, arguing with anyone who wants a fight.Suddenly she's getting attention from the ruling gang boss, and even American journalists want her working for them. In the noise of the Cité, Céce takes cash wherever she can to care for her aging uncle ­- but her growing fame can turn from power to danger in an instant.



Emmelie Prophète is an award-winning Haitian novelist, poet and cultural curator based in Port-au-Prince. Her novels have won numerous prizes including the ADELF Grand Prix Littéraire and the Prix FetKann Maryse Condé. She studied Law and Modern Literature at the Université de Port-au-Prince and later served as the Director of the National Library of Haiti, the Minister for Culture and as acting Minister for Justice.Aidan Rooney is a poet and translator from French and Haitian Kreyòl. His translations have been published in AGNI, Asymptote, Carte Blanche, Tanbou, and New American Writing #39, and his poetry has won Sunday Tribune / Hennessy Cognac Award for New Irish Poetry and the Daniel Varoujan Award.



A little gem of a book



Unforgettable... A cool, clear-eyed narrator... Unsparing observation is characteristic of this brave novel - a book that marvels at people who feel entitled to their tears



An intricate, honest, and achingly beautiful rendering of Port-au-Prince from the point of view of a bright young woman archiving it all. With stunning prose, Prophète constructs a fully realized world with its terrors and its tenderest people. This is a gift of a book.



Piercing and memorable



This arresting and lyrical chronicle amounts to an astonishing and deeply human story of resilience. It's unforgettable



Prophète's achievement is to make the real and the virtual sides of Célia's life equally vivid, and Aidan Rooney's terrific translation from the French conveys the heroine's profound despair and snarky resilience... opinionated, vulnerable, mordantly funny



A stark, unflinching novel...rich in observational detail... A bleak, clear-eyed vision of a woman, and society, in collapse



Cécé grabs us by the throat from the start, tightens the grip with each chapter, relaxes later on, then grips us again at the end, leaving us speechless.



Cécé feels like the arrival of a bold new talent, and its heroine's voice, amplified by Aidan Rooney's sparkling translation, is fresh and full of passionate energy as it rips open a whole new view of Haiti's tormented earth



There is something extraordinary within this novel. The women are remarkable. Light is passed on through them



Gripping



Immersed in the atmosphere and people of a Haitian cité... A deeply human testament to female resiliency



Through her online presence, Cécé wields power . . . Prophète's book intersperses actual events into the plot and highlights calamitous real-life situations . . . poignant and powerful



Emmelie Prophète renders the lives of others, particularly women, in tight prose and sharp narration



This audacious novelist invests her heroine with glory as she narrates on the social networks the lives of women from the cité. Totally believable, an indelible voice



Lively and vibrant . . . brimming with visceral detail.



A subtly thought-provoking novel of singular force . . . Prophète eschews easy answers, and Cécé stayed on my mind long after I closed the book.



Extraordinary



Cécé blew me away. This is such a carefully observed novel. The eye is unflinching, the voice at times acerbic yet tempered with compassion and deep humanity. Once I'd read the first chapter I found it impossible to put down