The novel begins in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital city, where the St Lazâre family have lived for almost three generations. The home where Laure grows up is in Pétionville, the richest suburb of Port-au-Prince, high in the cooler hills above the city. The St Lazâre family have lived here in Pétionville for almost three generations but their fortunes are no longer what they once were. As Améline, one of the main characters in the novel says, the house 'was a little like Haiti itself... doomed, despairing and yet beautiful still.'

The St Lazâres belong to the créole elite, the lighter-skinned families who are descendents of the inter-marriange between the French and African slaves who were brought to the island of Hispaniola in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the divisions between the races that form the backdrop of Bitter Chocolate and the inter-twined stories of Laure and Améline are still very much in evidence today. Click below for more pictures of a complex but beautiful and fascinating country.