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Recognized author of children’s literature, the Mauritian Priya Hein delivers with Riambel her first novel for adults. Descendant of indentured Indian workers in Mauritius, the novelist here tells a contemporary tale of servitude and social cruelty raging on an island that is said to be ” heavenly ». Riambel was awarded by the Mauritian Goncourt for his writing while ” modesty mixed with indignation ».
« It was in the fishing village, buried in the southernmost region of the island, that I was born and spent the fifteen years of my life. My village is called Riambel: Ri-Am-Bel. Ri Am Bel… It sounds singsong – something that suggests summer and laughter. Once I asked Mom if the name of our village just laughed it off. Laugh heartily. Without any restraint. Laugh ? What do I know? There is nothing to laugh about in this life – is it? So says Noémie, the heroine of Riambel. Riambel is the debut novel by rising Mauritian novelist Priya Hein.
Awarded last year by the prestigious Mauritian Jean Fanchette Prize 2021, with a jury chaired by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, Riambel tells the behind the scenes of paradise island. Prized by Western tourists for its fine sandy beaches and its turquoise sea, the island has nothing to do with paradise for the small Mauritian people, mixed-race descendants of former slaves and who make a living, on the fringes of five-star palaces and luxurious shopping centers. They are the true protagonists of Hein’s novel.
Noémie, Marie and others Tonton Antonio and Sebastien
The protagonists of Riambel are named Noémie, Marie and others Tonton Antonio and Sebastien… Noémie and her sister Marie grew up in the slums of Africa Town where all the miseries of the world are parked in sheet metal houses. A road separates the shantytown from the domain of the De Grandbourgs, wealthy whites, descendants of the sugar families who ruled Mauritius during its long colonial period. Noémie’s mother works for the De Grandbourgs. His eldest daughter, Marie, worked there too before getting kicked out like a dog on false allegations. She dies of frustration and overdose. Noémie was barely sixteen years old when she was brought to work in her turn among the whites, where she was the daily victim of racism and many humiliations.
« Noémie was born on the wrong side of the road and her destiny is predefinedexplains the author. It is a story that repeats itself generation after generation. Noémie is intelligent, full of life, she wants to learn. But unfortunately, it’s not going to end well. It is the consequence of colonization which pierces generations, while Noémie dreamed of another destiny. »
The teenager’s dream will not resist the harshness of reality and the cruelty of men. It is the slow shattering of Noémie’s dream that we witness in the pages of Riambel. The author shows herself to be particularly skilful in recounting the drift, the headlong rush. ” Sometimes when my gaze plunges into the ocean, her heroine sighs, I would like to swim as far as possible to the horizon. A sentence is enough to say the call of the sea.
Descendant herself of indentured Indian workers in the sugar plantations of Mauritius, the novelist Priya Hein understands well the aspiration to freedom of her heroine. Heir to the taste for adventure of her ancestors, she left Mauritius at an early age and lived for twenty years in Europe. Today she shares her life between her native island and Germany.
« Literature was my other lifeline “says Priya Hein. She came to writing by creating picture books for young audiences. She likes to tell how, after having searched in vain for a book about the dodo for her daughter, she began to write a story herself with a little dodo nicknamed Feno as its protagonist. As this story made her children laugh a lot, she sent it to a children’s publisher, who published it.
George Floyd et Black Lives Matter
Priya Hein is now a well-known children’s author, with ten titles in English, French, Creole and German. Riambelhis first novel, was born from a feeling of deep indignation provoked by the assassination of George Floyd in May 2020. Enthused by the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement, she wanted to take the floor to recount the racist incidents that she herself had suffered, without being able to be heard.
« I was in Germanyshe recalls. I said what I had to say, but people didn’t want to hear. I was discouraged from talking about racism. I was made to understand that as I belonged to an ethnic minority, I had to conform. That’s when I had the idea that if I couldn’t talk about it, I could write it. It was really important for me to write this story from the point of view of the descendants of former slaves and precisely from a non-conformist perspective. I lived for more than twenty years in Germany and that’s where I wrote Riambel. »
« The more I hurt, the better I write “, likes to repeat Priya Hein. The great strength of this young novelist is to have been able to transform the ills of the soul into the springs of a writing that goes beyond personal history to closely touch the social and the universal.
Riambel, by Priya Hein. Translated from English by Haddiayyah Tegally. Globe Editions, 208 pages, 22 euros.