We shall speak. We shall sing. We shall shout.’

This blazing autobiographical poem by the founder of the négritude movement became a rallying cry for decolonisation when it appeared in 1939. Following one man’s return from Europe to his homeland of Martinique, it is a reckoning with the trauma of slavery and exploitation, and a triumphant anthem for Black identity, one which reclaims and remakes language itself.

‘Nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of this time’ André Breton

‘A Césaire poem explodes and whirls about itself like a rocket, suns burst forth whirling and exploding’ Jean-Paul Sartre

‘The most influential Francophone Caribbean writer of his generation’ Independent

Translated by John Berger and Anna Bostock