Kettly Mars

In 2015, her novel Je suis vivant Archived 2018-05-18 at the Wayback Machine was awarded the Prix Ivoire pour la Littérature Africaine d’Expression Francophone at a ceremony in Abidjan in November.

[4] Presenting her novel at the Alliance Française d'Haïti in 2005, Mars cited the need to "lucidly, respectfully, and honestly" evoke the Vodou tradition in Haiti because it is too frequently treated like "a mirror in which [Haitians] refuse to see themselves.

Throughout the novel, Nirvah searches for traces of Daniel's whereabouts, visiting the Secretary of State Raoul Vincent in order to gather information, talking with neighbors and family members, and scouring a captive Port-au-Prince to find her husband.

Camps like Corail are described and depicted in works like Jonathan M. Katz's The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster and Raoul Peck's Assistance mortelle.

The brutal reality of the situation in Canaan is accompanied by the arrival of Fito's Japanese friend Tatsumi, a professor of Francophone Caribbean literature who has come to write about the earthquake.

Mars' most recent novel, Je suis vivant tells the story of a bourgeois Haitian family that suddenly has to welcome Alexandre back home after the mental health facility where he has spent the last three decades is forced to shut down because of the January 12, 2010 earthquake.

Coming back to the Caribbean, Marylène finds herself worn out, adorned with a pacemaker, and seeks new beginnings as she falls in love with Norah, the woman she has employed to model for her recent paintings.

These parallel returns relieve and weigh heavily on Éliane, the family matriarch and aging mother who is admittedly being kept alive by the virtue of a series of medications and careful attention.