Windward Heights

A retelling of Bront’s Wuthering Heights set in nineteenth-century Guadeloupe and Cuba. Prize-winning Caribbean novelist Maryse Cond reimagines Emily Bront’s passionate novel as a tale of obsessive love between the “African” Rayze and Cathy, the mulatto daughter of the man who takes Rayze in and raises him, but whose treatment goads Rayze into rebellious flight. In Cuba, Rayze makes his fortune, but upon his return he discovers Cathy has wed the weak scion of a socially prominent Creole family. Rayze determines to be avenged for the loss of his love. His vengeance continues into the next generation, haunting both Cathy’s daughter and his son. In characteristic lush prose, Cond transposes Wuthering Heights to her native island of Guadeloupe, retaining the emotional power of the original while showing us Caribbean society in the wake of emancipation. First published in 1998 by Faber U.K. in Caryl Phillips’s prestigious Caribbean series, Windward Heights is making its first appearance in the United States.