"A very tall, very thin old woman, with a serious, solemn face and motionless eyes. I had never perceived so much profound authority radiating from someone... She mixed Creole and French, the vulgar word, the precious word, the forgotten word, the new word..." And this is how Marie-Sophie Laborieux tells the author more than one hundred and fifty years of history, of the epic of Martinique, from the dark slave plantations to the contemporary drama of the conquest of the cities.

First, the love affair of Esternome, the freed "negro-dog", with the flighty Ninon who perishes in the explosion of Mount Pelée, then with Idoménée the blind woman with tears of light, who will be the mother of Marie-Sophie. In modern times, Marie-So wanders from one master to another, at the whim of a thousand and one "djobs" who initiate her into the implacable urban universe. Her love affairs are short-lived. Having become the soul of the Texaco district, she leads the revolt against the city's mulattoes, against the békés who want to appropriate the land, against the development programs that make time concrete.

It is this woman of combat that Christ (an urban planner charged with razing the Texaco district) will confront during a final battle where the forces of the Word will remain the only weapon.

Patrick Chamoiseau has undoubtedly written, with Texaco, the great book of hope and bitterness of the West Indian people, from the horror of chains to the lies of modern development policy. He paints scenes of daily life, historical moments, Creole fables, incantatory poems, dreams, satirical stories. A world in turmoil where suffering and joy seem to be born at the same moment.