In Their Own Words

Bâtisseurs du lendemain (Builders of the morrow) is an historical novel written in French.

Bâtisseurs du lendemain is Ludovic Comeau Jr.'s most significant literary project to date. In terms of time and paper, the 688-page book consumed at least twice as many resources as Comeau hoped it would when he started in March 2002, including a full year to consider revisions suggested by L'Harmattan, one of France's major publishers. Bâtisseurs du lendemain brings forth haunting images of the social and political fabric of a fictitious city that, like Haiti, Comeau's birth land, is celebrating the bicentennial of its independence. The story sheds light on historical and cultural dimensions of an "invented" nation whose spirit has been stifled by a dreadful oppression in the antagonistic person of the chief of State, le Prophète (the Prophet), whose rule spanned the second half of the 20th century, and into the third millennium. The narrative is shared by several individuals and collective voices framed by the voice of Maurice, the main protagonist, and his good friends, Jean-Jacques and Henri. The reader becomes an insider within the city where the charged one-day story takes place at the dawn of 2004, with flashbacks into the past to better inform the present. The novel offers intense dialogs where the author's ideas for the renaissance of the city and for the revitalization of the economy are spelled out in details. The interest of that day, which starts at 4:00 in the morning, lies in the anticipation, at the onset, of an "event" to take place in the late afternoon...