American · b. 1957
Madison Smartt Bell has written seventeen novels, but "All Souls' Rising" (1995) stands as his monument—the first volume of a trilogy about the Haitian Revolution, the only successful slave revolt in history. Bell brings the violence and complexity of 1791 Saint-Domingue to life through multiple perspectives: slaves, free coloreds, French colonists. The American author teaches at Goucher College and has written biographies of Robert Stone and Toussaint Louverture.