Novel · A way to begin
Rue la Poudrière
Not translated into English
Ananda Devi · 1989
Synopsis
In the poor quarter of the Dockers Flats in Port-Louis, Paule, a girl nobody wanted and who was given a man's name, tells the story of her life from her birth. She was sold to Mallacre, a sorcerer and flesh trader of the rue la Poudrière. Between prostitution, alcohol, superstition and warped family ties, she looks for a way to escape the fate this human anthill holds in store for her people. A light touch of the fantastic runs through the narrative.
Context
The author's first novel, after short stories, the book appeared in 1989 in Abidjan from Nouvelles Éditions africaines. It was reissued in Vacoas, Mauritius, by Le Printemps in 1997, then in 2024 by Project'iles, with a preface by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. Prostitution opens there the theme that the whole body of work will take up: self-destruction born of confinement in all its forms. Academic criticism reads in it a femininity constructed on the margins, within the Indo-Mauritian world.
Who it is for
A short, harsh novel, in a carefully wrought style; it has been available in bookshops again since 2024.
Prizes and reception
Long unobtainable, it has been reissued twice, and studies of the author see in it the foundation of her whole work.
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