Belonging to the island: Nathacha Appanah’s Blue Bay Palace and Ananda Devi’s Ève de ses décombres

Waters, J. (2018) Belonging to the island: Nathacha Appanah’s Blue Bay Palace and Ananda Devi’s Ève de ses décombres. In: The Mauritian Novel: Fictions of Belonging. Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures, 56. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, UK, pp. 77-108. ISBN 9781786941497 doi: 10.3828/mlo.v0i0.258

Abstract/Summary

Engaging with the work of feminist geographers, this chapter explores the ways in which the relationship between place, gender and belonging is depicted in Nathacha Appanah’s Blue Bay Palace (2004) and Ananda Devi’s Ève de ses décombres (2006). In both novels, the man-made spatial configurations of the fictionalised Mauritian environment are depicted as reflecting and constructing uneven, exploitative power and gender relations between its inhabitants. In contrast, this chapter analyses how both novels postulate alternative forms of female identification, though violence, with the island’s natural, non-human and pre-human geography. In both, a female harnessing of the island’s elemental power is seen to open up the possibility of more inclusive, woman-made forms of collective belonging to place in the future.

Additional Information	This is Chapter 2. The full book, entitled: 'The Mauritian Novel: Fictions of Belonging', is referenced on CentAUR here: http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/76132/.
Item Type	Book or Report Section
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/91430
Identification Number/DOI	10.3828/mlo.v0i0.258
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Literature and Languages > Languages and Cultures > French
Additional Information	This is Chapter 2. The full book, entitled: 'The Mauritian Novel: Fictions of Belonging', is referenced on CentAUR here: http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/76132/.
Publisher	Liverpool University Press
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