`The undisputed masterpiece of négritude and a poetic milestone of anti-colonialism` - Guardian `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