![]() As Valmorain's wife goes mad, Valmorain forces the teenage Tété into sexual servitude, which produces several illegitimate children. Valmorain's wife is fragile and superstitious and slowly succumbs to madness. ![]() Upon Valmorain's marriage, Tété becomes his wife's personal slave and housekeeper. Valmorain has dreams of financial success and is morally unopposed to slavery, though he dislikes punishing slaves himself, instead instructing his cruel overseer, Cambray, to administer the violence. ![]() As a young girl Tété is purchased by Violette, a mixed race courtesan, on behalf of Toulouse Valmorain, a Frenchman who has inherited his father's sugar plantation. Zarité (known as Tété) is the daughter of an African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage. The story opens on the island of Saint-Domingue (current day Haiti) in the late 18th century. The story is set during the Haitian Revolution. The book was issued in 2009 in Spanish as La Isla Bajo el Mar, and was translated into English by Margaret Sayers Peden, who had translated all (except the first) of Allende's books into English. It was first published in the United States by HarperCollins. Island Beneath the Sea ( Spanish: La Isla Bajo el Mar) is a 2009 novel by Chilean author Isabel Allende. ![]()
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