This study guide, prepared for use by NYU Press, is a resource for book clubs, classes, and reading groups of all kinds. If you have additional questions for the author, please send e-mail to her; questions and responses will be posted on a Pierre Forum page.

1. What do you make of the fact that a twentieth-century European-American female is writing in the person of an eighteenth-century African-American male? What implications are there for prose style and character creation?

2. Pierre considers himself a "philosophe," a "savant." He dreams of communing in France with the eminent natural historian Buffon. Despite Pierre's creation of a "cyclopedic histoire" of New- and Old-World African lore, can an argument be made that Pierre's adoption of Enlightenment values is a betrayal of his fellow slaves?

3. What does Pierre Baptiste's narrative seem to be saying about erotic love and conjugal relationships?

4. The idea of the parasite is central to this novel. In what ways does the foregrounding of that concept affect your sense of the relationship between "culture" and "nature"? Between "nature" and "nurture"?

5. The scientific and spiritual discoveries of Pierre Baptiste have led him to believe that humans and animals are part of the same spectrum of being as gods. He also believes that animals are possessed of spiritual powers. Yet Pierre Baptiste is colonized by creatures whose birth robs him of powers of speech. Can this paradox be reconciled with Pierre's escape from slavery, which had previously relegated him to the status of chattel beast?

6. What is your understanding of Pierre's utopian project? Is it the same as the author's? How does it relate to any utopian projects you might have?

7. What does Pierre's treatment of Pamphile when he washes ashore on Pierre's island say about Pierre? Would you have treated Pamphile the same way? Why or why not?

8. What is the nature of the spiritual transformation Pierre sustains? In what ways are his metaphysics like or unlike your own?

9. Can you imagine a different ending for this book? How would the story be different if it had been told from the point-of-view of Pélérine Vérité? Of Rose? Of Pamphile?

10. If you had to be marooned on a desert isle with someone, would you be pleased if it turned out to be Pierre? If so, why? If not, why not?