Welcome 2025: Six new international nonfiction titles that tell different stories about our lives | Scroll.in →

The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe, Marlene L Daut

Slave, revolutionary, king, Henry Christophe was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. Born to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to end slavery. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe began fighting with Napoleon's forces against the formerly enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later, reuniting with those he had abandoned, he offered to lead them and made himself their king. But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when Christophe – after nine years of his rule as King Henry I – shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet.