Author: Shenaz Patel
Publisher: Restless Books
ISBN: 1632062348
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 118
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Book Description
Based on a true, still-unfolding story, Silence of the Chagos is a powerful exploration of cultural identity, the concept of home, and above all the neverending desire for justice. Shenaz Patel draws on the lives of exiled Chagossians in this tragic example of 20th century political oppression. Every afternoon a woman in a red headscarf walks to the end of the quay and looks out over the water, fixing her gaze “back there”: to Diego Garcia, one of the small islands forming the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean. With no explanation, no forewarning, and only an hour to pack their belongings, the Chagossians are deported to Mauritius. Officials tell her that the island is “closed”— there is no going back for any of them. Charlesia longs for life on Diego Garcia, where the days were spent working on a coconut plantation; the nights dancing to sega music. As she struggles to come to terms with her new reality, Charlesia crosses paths with Désiré, a young man born on the one-way journey to Mauritius. Désiré has never set foot on Diego Garcia, but as Charlesia unfolds the dramatic story of his people, he learns of the home he never knew and the disrupted future of his people. With the sovereignty of Chagos currently being debated on an international judiciary level, Silence of the Chagos is an important and timely examination of the rights of individuals in the face of governmental corruption. Praise for Silence of the Chagos: “Some twenty years ago, I was struck by a photo showing barefoot women on the road facing the armed police. They were Chagossian women protesting in Mauritius with astonishing determination.” This photo, which she's never forgotten, is the inspiration for the Mauritian novelist and journalist Shenaz Patel's third book. Mingling various voice, Patel describes, in a bitter, clear-cut style, the tragedy of the inhabitants of the Chagos, those coral islands of the Indian Ocean that were turned into an American military base and whose inhabitants had been banished to Mauritius between 1967 and 1972. With a prose that seeps and stings, and a sharp sensibility, Shenaz Patel breathes life into the painful nostalgia, the lingering memories, and the eternal incomprehension of these expelled from a string of lost islands.” —Le Monde “This novel has two voices, those of Charlesia and Désiré, both of whom are foreigners, natives of the Chagos archipelago, living in exile in Mauritius, an island that is a paradise for some but a hell for them. The Chagos are an archipelago that would have been hidden in the depths of the Indian Ocean, had Americans not built a military base to bombard other countries. Charlesia and Désiré live and breathe; the Mauritian writer Shenaz Patel introduces us to them and gives them voice again.” —Libération “From scenes of daily life to the horrors of forced exile, through the grief of deculturation and the experience of an impossible identity, Patel interrogates the relationship between political expediency and its all-too-human consequences, between the abstract needs of international security and the concrete needs of the individual, and above all between the rich and the poor.” —L'Express
Author: Barbro Lindgren
Publisher: Restless Books
ISBN: 1632062593
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 34
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Book Description
A hilarious, darkly comic graphic retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in radically condensed prose by legendary Swedish children’s author Barbro Lindgren and illustrator Anna Höglund. Look Hamlet. Hamlet not happy. Hamlet’s mommy dumb. Hamlet’s daddy dead. So begins this wonderfully strange, dark, and hilarious picture book version of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy boiled down to its smallest possible size: 100 words, give or take, and fifteen etchings that look like the lovechild of Beatrix Potter and Edward Gorey. In our despondent antihero, a lop-eared bunny Hamlet with handbag in tow, is somehow embodied all the tremendous pathos of Shakespeare’s Danish Prince. And in legendary Swedish children’s author Barbro Lindgren’s pithy prose resides the poetry of the original, reworked for the era of memes and short attention spans. Bold and brilliant, irreverent and humane, Look Hamlet is the perfect irreverent gift for Shakespeare readers of all ages. As the Bard himself wrote: “brevity is the soul of wit.”
Author: Julia Waters
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1786949490
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
This book analyses how the idea – or the problem - of belonging is articulated in a range of contemporary francophone Mauritian novels. Waters explores how forms of affective belonging intersect with the exclusionary ‘politics of belonging’ in novels by Nathacha Appanah, Ananda Devi, Shenaz Patel, Bertrand de Robillard, Amal Sewtohul and Carl de Souza.
Author: Natasha Soobramanien
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1635901626
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
Sad and funny and bitter and true, a novel about grief, discovering your own story, and trying to listen for those stories that are not yours to tell. August 2014. Two friends, writers Damaris Caleemootoo and Oliver Pablo Herzberg, arrive in Edinburgh from London, the city that killed Daniel—his brother, her frenemy and loved by them both. Every day is different but the same. Trying to get to the library, they get distracted by bickering—will it rain or not and what should they do about their tanking bitcoin?—in the end failing to write or resist the sadness which follows them as they drift around the city. On such a day they meet Diego, a poet. They learn that Diego’s mother was from the Chagos Archipelago, that she and her community were forced to leave their ancestral islands by soldiers in 1973 to make way for a military base. They become obsessed with this notorious episode in British history and the continuing resistance of the Chagossian people, and feel urged to write in solidarity. But how to share a story that is not theirs to tell? Sad, funny and angry, this collaborative fiction builds on the true fact of another: a collaborative fiction created by the British and US governments to dispossess a people of their homeland.
Author: Aimee Liu
Publisher: Red Hen Press
ISBN: 1597098477
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
“An absolutely gorgeous historical novel . . . set against the backdrop of a tribe in the Andamans struggling with British rule . . . Just magnificent.” —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You One of Booklist’s Top Ten Historical Fiction Books of 2020 Glorious Boy is a tale of war and devotion, longing and loss, and the power of love to prevail. Set in India’s remote Andaman Islands before and during WWII, the story revolves around a mysteriously mute four-year-old who vanishes on the eve of the Japanese occupation. Little Ty’s parents, Shep and Claire, will go to any lengths to rescue him, but neither is prepared for the brutal and soul-changing odyssey that awaits them. “A riveting amalgam of history, family epic, anticolonial/antiwar treatise, cultural crossroads, and more . . . a fascinating, irresistible marvel.” —Library Journal (starred review) “The most memorable and original novel I’ve read in ages . . . evokes every side in a multi-cultural conversation with sympathy and rare understanding.” —Pico Iyer, author of Autumn Light Shortlisted for the Staunch Book Prize New York Post’s Best Books of the Week Good Housekeeping’s 20 Best Books of 2020 Parade’s 30 Best Beach Reads of 2020
Author: Agustín de Rojas
Publisher: Restless Books
ISBN: 1632060175
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 602
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Book Description
The cult classic from the godfather of Cuban science fiction, Agustín de Rojas’s The Year 200 is both a visionary sci-fi masterwork and a bold political parable about the perils of state power. Centuries have passed since the Communist Federation defeated the capitalist Empire, but humanity is still divided. A vast artificial-intelligence network, a psychiatric bureaucracy, and a tiny egalitarian council oversee civil affairs and quash “abnormal” attitudes such as romantic love. Disillusioned civilians renounce the new society and either forego technology to live as “primitives” or enhance their brains with cybernetic implants to become “cybos.” When the Empire returns and takes over the minds of unsuspecting citizens in a scenario that terrifyingly recalls Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the world’s fate falls into the hands of two brave women. Originally published in 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the onset of Cuba's devastating Special Period, Agustín de Rojas’s magnum opus brings contemporary trajectories to their logical extremes and boldly asks, “What does ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ really mean?”
Author: Patricia L. Roberts
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476634866
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
James T. Scott's 1923 lynching in the college town of Columbia, Missouri, was precipitated by a case of mistaken identity. Falsely accused of rape, the World War I veteran was dragged from jail by a mob and hanged from a bridge before 1000 onlookers. Patricia L. Roberts lived most of her life unaware that her aunt was the girl who erroneously accused Scott, only learning of it from a 2003 account in the University of Missouri's school newspaper. Drawing on archival research, she tells Scott's full story for the first time in the context of the racism of the Jim Crow Midwest.
Author: Tor Sellström
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004292497
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409
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Book Description
The four sovereign Indian Ocean states of Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles, the two French overseas departments of Mayotte and Reunion, as well as the British colony of BIOT (Chagos), all form part of Africa. As insular nations and territories in an increasingly globalized, militarized and largely unregulated ocean, they face particular challenges. Commonly overlooked in the fields of African and international studies, this text traces the islands’ history and explores their diverse contemporary social, political and economic trajectories. From human settlement and slavery to conflict resolution and piracy, the relations with continental Africa and the African Union feature prominently. Richly sourced, this comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to Africa’s Indian Ocean islands covers a significant lacuna.
Author: David Vine
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691149836
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
David Vine recounts how the British & US governments created the Diego Garcia base, making the native Chagossians homeless in the process. He details the strategic significance of this remote location & also describes recent efforts by the exiles to regain their territory.
Author: Ananda Devi
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
ISBN: 1941920411
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 155
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Book Description
With brutal honesty and poetic urgency, Ananda Devi relates the tale of four young Mauritians trapped in their country's endless cycle of fear and violence. Eve out of Her Ruins is a heartbreaking look at the Mauritius tourists don't see, and an exploration of the construction of personhood at the margins of society.
