One of the first things I was told in Haiti is that all families have at least one member in the army, at least one member in the Macoutes, and at least one member killed by the army or the Macoutes. Memory at Bay is a distressingly beautiful evocation of this eerie symbiosis between oppressor and victim, by one of the best writers in the Caribbean basin today."

As one of Évelyne Trouillot's characters says to another, "My only inheritance from you was your torment.