Author(s) | Toni Morrison

Hardcover | 96 pages

Publisher | KNOPF, 2022

Language(s) | English

ISBN-13 | 978-0-593-31503-3

Product Dimensions | 12.1 x 17.5 cm

Photography | Creatives duMonde

Definition | Récitatif, (in English, recitative) | noun

Musical declamation of the kind usual in the narrative and dialogue parts of opera and oratorio, sung in the rhythm of ordinary speech with many words on the same note.

‘singing in recitative’

Author / Oeuvre | Toni Morrison, American novelist and Nobel Laureate in Literature, wrote eleven novels and one short story entitled Recitatif.

Accompaniment | In her masterful, erudite introduction, Zadie Smith declares: “The music of Morrison begins in ‘ordinary speech.’” The first half of this bonny, blue hardcover embodies Smith at her analytical and probative best. She mines the cultural and political history that informs Morrison’s ingenious experiment on the reader; further, and indubitably, evincing Recitatif a vigorous and enduring treatise on the human condition.

TMG