The Delicate Beast (Bellevue Literary Press) by Haitian-born Roger Celestin examines life beneath the shadow of oppression, set in the 1950s in a locale called the “Tropical Republic”, symbolic of Haiti itself. In Celestin’s debut novel, a young male protagonist grows up in the lushness and decadence that his family’s elite status affords him, before the menacing arrival of “the Mortician”. Split between the Tropical Republic and New York, following the central character from boyhood into adult awareness, The Delicate Beast is an existential epic.