Where: Caribbean island of Haiti

When: Late 1700s

All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell is the first book in a three-part series that chronicles the slave uprising in Haiti around the end of the 18th century. The trilogy is historical fiction whose locus of action is the Haitian Revolution of 1791. The story follows the revolt from the perspective of characters from many different places in life.

All Souls' Rising primarily takes place in the Caribbean island of Haiti in the late 1700s. During that time, the island was divided between Spanish colonization in the west and French colonization in the East. The divide fomented the slave revolt, which claimed thousands of lives within its first few months. The revolt was the only slave uprising that resulted in the creation of a state that was ruled by non-whites and free of slavery.