Part One: I, The Wax Heads and II, The Amputation Summary

The Kingdom of This World tells the story of Ti Noël and the political turmoil in Haiti following the French colonial days. Ti Noël is a slave on a plantation in northern Haiti, then known as Santo Domingo. He participates in rebellion against the French colonists, and when his master flees to Cuba, Ti Noël is taken along and lost in a card game to a Cuban plantation owner. Ti Noël saves up his money and buys passage back to the now-free Haiti only to find that dictatorial King Henri Christophe has made slave labor of his fellow blacks. Henri Christophe is overthrown only for a mulatto upper class to rise and enforce labor on the darker-skinned blacks. At the end...