Author(s): Ananda Devi

Young Adult | Read our reviews! | Les Fugitives | Translated fiction

Winner of the Prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie 2006 (France) and the CLMP Firecracker Award in Fiction, 2017 (USA)
Finalist for the inaugural TA First Translation Prize 2018 (UK), the Albertine Prize 2017 and the Best Translated Book Award 2017 (USA)

Two girls: Eve, whose body is her only weapon and source of power; Savita, Eve's best friend and the only one who loves her selflessly, planning to leave, but not without Eve.

Two boys: Saadiq, gifted would-be poet, deeply in love with Eve; Clélio, the neighbourhood tough, waiting without hope for his brother to send for him from France.
All are desperate to escape the cycle of fear and violence in which they are trapped.

‘… incredible, so poetic and visceral. Devi is a powerful and uncompromising writer but the moments of tenderness and humanity throughout made the lack of it all the more stark. I'm so glad it's been translated, we need more books like this on shelves!’ — Deirdre Sullivan, author of Tangleweed and Brine

‘“One day we wake up and the future has disappeared.” So begins adult life in Troumaron, a run-down area of Port Louis, in Mauritius. But Devi’s young protagonists resist this erasure; boldest among them is Eve, one of the most compelling fictional characters I’ve ever encountered.’ — Natasha Soobramanien, author of Genie and Paul

‘The most vivid novel I’ve read in ages, magnificently translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman. The gorgeous, profoundly poetic writing is completely mesmerizing and viscerally affecting: it gave me goose bumps several times....The narrative slowly escalates through brilliant and memorable scenes, as well as haunting inner monologues, to its glorious conclusion....There is something so triumphant and so powerful in the structure of Eve, and something so real and touching in these characters, each consistent, unexpected, thought-provoking and wonderful. A work of profound sympathy and deep desire.’ — Jennifer Croft, translator of Flights, 2018 Man Booker International Prize.

Age 16+

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THOMAS'S REVIEW:
Devi does an excellent job of inhabiting the heads and capturing the patterns of thought that occur just on the brink of consciousness of the four narrators of this account of young lives in the slums of Port Louis in Mauritius. Just as a plughole communicates its force at all times to the entire contents of a basin, even to the molecules that have not yet begun to circle or descend, there is throughout the book a sense that a hopeless future is pulling upon the characters, that their descent will be at first slow and then sudden, that the world for them is tilted and greased, that their voices are impermanent, that they will become those that now harm them and are caught by harm. “One day we wake up and the future has disappeared.” In a milieu where the energies of sex and violence already run in the same channels, where currency is extracted in rape, beatings and murder, how can the voices of individuals, and how can moments of happiness and beauty, be preserved as more than corruscations swallowed, first slowly and then suddenly, by future shadow? Is to fight against your fate a way of preserving your independence from it, for a short moment at least, or does fighting it draw it more tightly entangled upon you?