FICTION: Island Beneath The Seaby Isabel Allende Fourth Estate 457pp £18.99

EARLIER THIS YEAR the world’s eyes turned to Haiti when a huge earthquake brought catastrophic damage to the poorest country in the western hemisphere. While international aid was urgently drafted in, Haiti was suddenly in our living rooms; we watched with horror as the full devastation unfolded on our screens. Buildings everywhere toppled, from shanty-town shacks to the president’s gleaming white National Palace. Broken, bloody bodies were found in the rubble and buried in mass graves; almost 300,000 people died. It was hard to imagine how Haiti could ever recover.

But then Haiti – whose name is Arawak for land of mountains – has never had it easy. Isabel Allende's novel Island Beneath the Seabegins in Saint-Domingue (once the richest colony in the Americas) in 1771 and follows the uprising of the slaves – and its appalling consequences – which led to the nation's independence and renaming it Haiti in 1804.

Zarité Sedella, known as Tété, whose mother was a slave and father a sailor, is tutored by the sensual and charismatic Violette Boisier, a courtesan who perfects her craft by skilfully keeping a dove’s egg in “her secret place”. Boisier sells the nine-year-old Tété to Toulouse Valmorain, a long-serving French customer. When Valmorain’s father dies from syphilis, he inherits his sugar plantation. Valmorain unwillingly abandons his life in France, where “ideas and science and the arts were exalted”, and, swapping wigs and heels for sunburn and boots, takes on the role of planter.

Much of the first half of this long novel centres around the plantation, Saint Lazare, where slaves “thin as shadows cut the cane to ground”. When Tété is old enough she is given the role of housekeeper; she manages the domestic day-to-day running of the estate house, and tends to Valmorain’s wife, Eugenia, a frightened soul, unaware of her husband’s infidelities. Indeed, Valmorain rapes Tété whenever he feels like it; she learns to let herself be “used with the passivity of a sheep”. When her first child is taken away, so as not to alarm Eugenia, Tété has no choice but to accept that she will never see her baby boy again. But by the time her second child is born Eugenia is too insane to notice, and a daughter, Rosette, is permitted to stay.

When Saint Lazare is attacked, Tété flees with her master and children into the treacherous, wild hills, fit not for “horsemen but monkeys”. She selflessly rejects a life with her true love, Gambo, and together Valmorain, Tété, Maurice (Valmorain’s son) and Rosette escape by boat to Cuba and, finally, New Orleans. They leave behind a horrific, escalating civil war. Thousands die, both blacks and whites, and 1,000 plantations are destroyed. Allende describes the terror when fires raged in Le Cap, “the sea and skies stained with reds and oranges”, and she describes the ocean, “boiling with sharks attracted by the scent of blood”.

The cast of this sprawling, rich narrative is impressive; Eugenia’s brother Sancho is a true bon viveur, not unlike Rhett Butler, and the most likeable male character; the hideous Hortense becomes Valmorain’s second wife, who, much to her fury, is unable to produce an heir; Tante Rose is a mysterious and wise healer “who could go at night where others did not dare venture by day”, and Dr Parmentier is often a much-needed voice of reason and compassion. His intelligent discussions with Valmorain about slavery are enlightening. “Millions of Africans are subjected to slavery but many more are free. Slavery is not their destiny, just as is also the case with thousands of whites who are slaves.”

Each short chapter is titled, and the third-person narrative is interspersed with Tété’s own storytelling, adding further intensity and depth. “From the boat New Orleans looked like a waning moon floating on the sea, white and luminous. When I saw it I knew I would never return to Saint-Domingue.”

Occasionally the prose is packed with historical information – Allende certainly did her homework – but it is also alive with spellbinding imagery and laced with intriguing folklore. Allende writes about the voodoo faith – often regarded as a sinister practice involving pins and dolls – in a way that makes sense. She presents a landscape of opposites: pain and beauty, birth and death, black and white, love and hate, religion and superstition, captivity and freedom. Seeds scattered through early chapters flower spectacularly in later pages. There is never any doubt that Allende knows how to expertly manage her substantial plot.

This is a satisfying and powerful saga, lending insight and understanding to a deeply troubled land, at a moment in history when slaves were worked to death in a kind of colonial meat machine.

Allende could never have known about the devastating earthquake when she was finishing her novel, yet it almost feels as if she did: the arrival of her Island Beneath the Sea could not have been more prescient.

Amanda Smyth's debut novel, Black Rock, is published in paperback by Serpent's Tail