The spiral form of the novel provides a clear narrative structure from which to delve into an infinitely relevant and repeating past. Quiet Dawn is a swirling epic that amounts to a fulsome confrontation with Black Atlantic history, in all its complexity and irresolution. Switching among narrators, places, and moments in time, it is not meant to be an easy read. By constantly shifting the parameters of the present in his narrative, Fignolé implicitly demands that his reader recognize the absolute contingency and even unhelpful arbitrariness of a linear conception of time or a bordered conception of space. The present of the novel is fractured, traumatic, and multifaceted. The brutal violence of the world its characters share has broken each of them in ways more and less metaphorical, more and less literal.
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