“Stories of slavery do not interest us much.” Coming as it does on the first page of “Slave Old Man,” Patrick Chamoiseau’s myth-infused narrative of an escaped slave, it’s clear that such a statement is tongue-in-cheek. Indeed, the runaway success of books like Colson Whitehead’s “The Underground Railroad” suggests that we can’t get enough of slavery stories, and may account for this 1997 title recently being made available in English translation for the first time.