Portrait of an Island on Fire

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

A deeply moving and revelatory reading experience, the essays collected inPortrait of an Island on Fireform a searing account of Mauritius at a crucial moment in its history. Unceasing in its critiques of various abuses of power, in its unpicking of the ills at the core of Mauritian society and their roots, the collection is a milestone in thinking about the lasting social and political effects of colonialism and how they play out at the level of government policy, the handling of environmental issues, in schools, all the way down to the way that individuals relate to one another.

Reviews

Ariel Saramandi is a courageous and mesmerising new voice, a chronicler of contemporary Mauritius whose writing refracts the influences of her Mauritian compatriots, Ananda Devi, Nathacha Appanah and Shenaz Patel in French, Lindsey Collen in English, in a voice which is wholly her own. Portrait of an Island on Fireunpicks the knots of Mauritiuss entangled histories of plantation slavery, of indentured labour, of colonisation, of communalism and patriarchy laying out the threads which make up her own history of ancestral oppression and structure her lived experience of privilege and pain; which form the fabric of contemporary capitalist Mauritius, and its particular intersections of race, class, gender, and language its politics and its particular forms of the white supremacy, anti-Blackness and toxic masculinity acted out on the bodies of those without power the world over. Saramandi is laser-focused in her rage, joyful in both her refusal to look away, and in her insistence on what sustains her: writing, motherhood, her marriage, friendships, community and the beauty of her island.
Natasha Soobramanien, co-author ofDiego Garcia

'With an unflinching, searing clarity, Ariel Saramandi opens the festering wounds that have been sewn shut by silence in Mauritius since the time of colonialism and slavery. This legacy of racism sheds light on new forms of economic enslavement, the consequences of climate warming, abortion rights, old and new misogyny, the utter irresponsibility of successive governments. This important book is both heartbreaking and a wake-up call: is it too late to act A small, supposedly paradisiac island is teetering on a brink a mirror of our world. But who really cares'
Ananda Devi, author ofEve Out of Her Ruins

These overlapping essays form a coruscating portrait of a place and make for a searing indictment of our times.Portrait of an Island on Fireis written with a formidable intelligence and with a precisely-targeted rage, and comes from a place of passion and of deep love. Ariel Saramandi is a writer of Mauritius and for our whole twenty-first century world; these essays are cris de coeur, they are wake-up calls they are essays everyone should read.
Lucy Caldwell, author ofThese Days

Author Bio

Ariel Saramandi is an Anglo-Mauritian writer living in Mauritius. Her fiction and essays have been published byGranta, theLos Angeles Reviewof BooksandThe White Review, among others. She has reported on Mauritius for the likes of the BBC and NBC. Her work has been supported by the Tin House Winter Workshop 2023 and the Stinging Fly Summer School 2023. She is a member of the MMM's Commission de Dveloppement Durable.