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Eve out of Her Ruins
‘Devi’s prose is both thoughtful and torrential in its force.’ – Le Monde
With startling honesty and lyric power, Ananda Devi relates the tale of four young Mauritians bound together by the need to transcend their environment at any price: Eve, whose body is her only weapon and source of power; Savita, Eve’s best friend, the only one who loves her without self-interest; Saadiq, gifted would-be poet, inspired by Rimbaud, in love with Eve; and Clélio, belligerent rebel, waiting without hope for his brother to send for him from France.
Eve out of Her Ruins is a heartbreaking look at the dark corners of the island nation of Mauritius that tourists never see, and a poignant exploration of lives at the margins of society. Published in the UK for the first time, this celebrated novel won the 2006 Prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie.
‘Turning her back on the illusion of eternal youth, Devi focuses unflinchingly on that tipping point in life that only women can understand, since where sex is concerned men and women must forever remain mutually unintelligble. Yes, here is a truly great writer, since when we finish Devi’s book we are unlikely to know what has motivated her to write such a story, such a cry of protest.’
– J. M. G. Le Clézio
‘One of the major literary voices of the Indian Ocean.’ – PEN American Centre
Ananda Devi: ‘Identity is, to me, an exploration of all the possibilities of being. It is the opposite of monolithic ... As people tend to entrench themselves behind the barriers of a fixed, immutable identity, I believe our chance of survival is in the exact opposite: in embracing our hybridity, in accepting that identities are soluble in one another, in recognising that the other is ourselves.’
With startling honesty and lyric power, Ananda Devi relates the tale of four young Mauritians bound together by the need to transcend their environment at any price: Eve, whose body is her only weapon and source of power; Savita, Eve’s best friend, the only one who loves her without self-interest; Saadiq, gifted would-be poet, inspired by Rimbaud, in love with Eve; and Clélio, belligerent rebel, waiting without hope for his brother to send for him from France.
Eve out of Her Ruins is a heartbreaking look at the dark corners of the island nation of Mauritius that tourists never see, and a poignant exploration of lives at the margins of society. Published in the UK for the first time, this celebrated novel won the 2006 Prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie.
‘Turning her back on the illusion of eternal youth, Devi focuses unflinchingly on that tipping point in life that only women can understand, since where sex is concerned men and women must forever remain mutually unintelligble. Yes, here is a truly great writer, since when we finish Devi’s book we are unlikely to know what has motivated her to write such a story, such a cry of protest.’
– J. M. G. Le Clézio
‘One of the major literary voices of the Indian Ocean.’ – PEN American Centre
Ananda Devi: ‘Identity is, to me, an exploration of all the possibilities of being. It is the opposite of monolithic ... As people tend to entrench themselves behind the barriers of a fixed, immutable identity, I believe our chance of survival is in the exact opposite: in embracing our hybridity, in accepting that identities are soluble in one another, in recognising that the other is ourselves.’
168 pages, Paperback
First published January 5, 2006
About the author
Ananda Devi
45 books79 followersAnanda Devi is a Mauritian writer. Her novel, Eve de ses décombres, won the Prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie in 2006, as well as several other prizes. It was adapted for the cinema by Sharvan Anenden and Harrikrisna Anenden. In 2007, Devi received the Certificat d'Honneur Maurice Cagnon du Conseil International d'Études Francophones.[1] She has since won other literary prizes, including the Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature française of the Académie française. During 2010 she was bestowed with Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 232 reviews
November 14, 2021
4.5 "powerful poetic prose re: poverty" stars !!
2017 Honorable Mention Read
This is not a book that you read....this is a book that grabs you, shakes you, chews you and spits you out. Not for the squeamish or faint of heart. A book that takes squalor and poverty and drenches you with its despair and filth. Your feelings as a reader do not matter. You are complicit in your middle class cocoon of the torture and subjugation of huge swaths of people with your smart phones, Michael Kors bags and SUVs. Do not pretend that its not true. This book will not allow leftist apologists or bleeding heart liberals pretend that they care about the destitute and disadvantaged while sipping their Chablis at fundraisers after taking spoiled brats to ballet or soccer.
The story takes place in Troumaron in Mauritius and follows four youths who are sad, angry, hopeless and destructive. They are born in poverty, shit poverty, eat shit and are killed, die or self-destruct. The girls are terrified and the boys terrorize. There is love, sex and hate in equal measure despite lack of food, education and respect of all kinds.
Ms. Devi does not mince words. She tells it how she sees it and in fact, how it actually is:
Afterward, when he's done slobbering, I'll get up and, the better to destroy him, sit on this table to do my work in the silence of the room, in the bodily smells all around, my clothes rumpled, my hair still wet, my mouth dry, my body emptied out, my soul worn out, my memories dirtied, my days paid for, my pride ripped open, my sex loosened, and the letters and words of my knowledge like lead on the page but still meaningless without any illumination, displaying their powerlessness and indifference because Savita will not be out there waiting for me like always to tie the rope of my life together, again within my body and without that, I don't have any life, anything to hold me up over the emptiness, anything to keep me from letting go....
Forget Eat, Pray, Love as for most of the world it is Breathe, Fight, Fuck and Die.
No middle class bullshit can withstand that especially my own.
2017 Honorable Mention Read
This is not a book that you read....this is a book that grabs you, shakes you, chews you and spits you out. Not for the squeamish or faint of heart. A book that takes squalor and poverty and drenches you with its despair and filth. Your feelings as a reader do not matter. You are complicit in your middle class cocoon of the torture and subjugation of huge swaths of people with your smart phones, Michael Kors bags and SUVs. Do not pretend that its not true. This book will not allow leftist apologists or bleeding heart liberals pretend that they care about the destitute and disadvantaged while sipping their Chablis at fundraisers after taking spoiled brats to ballet or soccer.
The story takes place in Troumaron in Mauritius and follows four youths who are sad, angry, hopeless and destructive. They are born in poverty, shit poverty, eat shit and are killed, die or self-destruct. The girls are terrified and the boys terrorize. There is love, sex and hate in equal measure despite lack of food, education and respect of all kinds.
Ms. Devi does not mince words. She tells it how she sees it and in fact, how it actually is:
Afterward, when he's done slobbering, I'll get up and, the better to destroy him, sit on this table to do my work in the silence of the room, in the bodily smells all around, my clothes rumpled, my hair still wet, my mouth dry, my body emptied out, my soul worn out, my memories dirtied, my days paid for, my pride ripped open, my sex loosened, and the letters and words of my knowledge like lead on the page but still meaningless without any illumination, displaying their powerlessness and indifference because Savita will not be out there waiting for me like always to tie the rope of my life together, again within my body and without that, I don't have any life, anything to hold me up over the emptiness, anything to keep me from letting go....
Forget Eat, Pray, Love as for most of the world it is Breathe, Fight, Fuck and Die.
No middle class bullshit can withstand that especially my own.
March 12, 2017
I really enjoyed this book. I read the first half painstakingly slowly, because it felt wrong to read more than a few pages a day. The second half I read in one setting, due to a climactic moment and the frenzy of activity until the end. It almost reads like two different books.
It looks like there is a film based on the book but I'm not sure I want to see it!
"They run to escape, swallowing the harshness of their future.The setting is the Troumoron in Mauritius, an impoverished area in Port Louis, Mauritius. The four distinct voices are children, teens, who are stifled and invisible in their poverty. Their lives occur alongside the wealthy populations living on the island, locals and tourists, but it is like parallel universes. The options are few - the lawlessness forces one girl into prostitution (but the kind that isn't for money, but to survive,) and a budding poet into a gang. The two other voices are more minor characters but also suffer from a lack of options and upward mobility.
I stay afloat."
"The laughter of women is laughter in this lost place, laughter that opens up a small part of paradise so we don't drown ourselves."The writing is GORGEOUS and I was happy to take my time over the words in the first half. I really do think the translator should be awarded for the work he has done, and I felt even more strongly about this in reading his notes on the translation, and how he thought through the dialect and Creole challenges. But beyond it being beautiful, I think the style of the writing serves a purpose. The deep thoughts are painfully pretty, but seem representative of the way the children have to insulate themselves from the world around them. The words and thoughts are the only thing they own. It makes sense then that as the world swirls around a chaotic event, and as more adult voices enter the scene, the words simplify and start to move faster. But while they do, the four children lose the protection of the beautiful words and have no choice but to face their realities. They had never escaped, but their minds seemed to be creating a buffer.
It looks like there is a film based on the book but I'm not sure I want to see it!
September 2, 2019
Eve Out of Her Ruins
is a dramatic short novel, and I mean dramatic in the theatrical sense. Not only does the obsession-death-and-vengeance plot feel quite Shakespearean, the writing is also elevated, poetic. The four alternating teenage narrators, all in first person voice, speechify and soliloquise:
“The buildings are straight ahead. I’m not afraid of them. I dare them to look back at me. All of us born there are fated to die, but that doesn’t mean anything. Everybody is born to that fate. The babies’ eyes are drained of color and sky. I’ve known for a long time the coldness of metal. It’s imbued me with its liquid strength.”
It’s the sort of heightened language that’s not particularly concerned with being a naturalistic rendering of how these characters might think and talk - yet it somehow remains convincing.
The setting, on the other hand, is urban and gritty - an impoverished slum area in Mauritius. The atmosphere of poverty, gang violence, sexual exploitation and injustice is a stark one, thrown into further contrast by the paradisal tourist resorts just blocks away.
This combination of gritty and mythic, modern and classical, really worked for me and I found the overall effect captivating. 4 stars.
“The buildings are straight ahead. I’m not afraid of them. I dare them to look back at me. All of us born there are fated to die, but that doesn’t mean anything. Everybody is born to that fate. The babies’ eyes are drained of color and sky. I’ve known for a long time the coldness of metal. It’s imbued me with its liquid strength.”
It’s the sort of heightened language that’s not particularly concerned with being a naturalistic rendering of how these characters might think and talk - yet it somehow remains convincing.
The setting, on the other hand, is urban and gritty - an impoverished slum area in Mauritius. The atmosphere of poverty, gang violence, sexual exploitation and injustice is a stark one, thrown into further contrast by the paradisal tourist resorts just blocks away.
This combination of gritty and mythic, modern and classical, really worked for me and I found the overall effect captivating. 4 stars.
March 24, 2017
Moving, shocking, very powerful in its sadness and stunningly written (almost every sentence to be quoted) story of 4 teenagers living in slums of Port Louis, Mauritius. Second publication of tiny publisher Les Fugitives. It made me order their first. My first fiction 5 stars read this year.
August 15, 2017
In my head I make a promise: Eve, I will bring you out of your ruins.
While this has been a strong year, it is still a relief, in Women in Translation Month to turn away from the Booker longlist and back to my real loves –translated fiction from UK independent small presses.
Les Fugitives, also publishers of Blue Self Portrait (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) have a very specific remit: to publish short, new writing by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English or in the UK and work in conjunction with the wonderful CB Editions, who focus. on short fiction, poetry, translations and other work which, as the Guardian noted, ‘might otherwise fall through the cracks between the big publishers’
Their highest profile success to date has been Eve out of Her Ruins, Jeffrey Zuckerman's translation of Ananda Devi's Ève de ses décombres, which, in its US edition published by Deep Vellum, won the CLMP Firecracker Award (for Independently and Self-Published fiction), as well as making the shortlist for the illustrious Best Translated Book Award and for the Albertine Prize (for translated contemporary French fiction).
It is also great to read a book from a new country for me: Mauritius. Although this is a rather different Mauritius to that with which tourists are familiar. As Devi herself says:
Sometimes, when the neighbourhood is quiet, the island’s sounds seem different. Other kinds of music, less funereal tones, the clang of cash registers, the dazzle of development. The tourists scorn us without realizing it. Money has made them naïve. We cheat them out of a few rupees until they begin to mistrust our pleasant, false faces.
The country puts on its sky-blue dress, the better to seduce them. A marine perfume wafts from its crotch. From here we can’t see the island all dolled up, and their eyes, dazzled by the sun, can’t see us. As things should be.
The novel opens with an almost apocalyptic scene of a girl, Eve, limping through the derelict area, a gun in her satchel:
I limp, I hobble along on the steaming asphalt ,The urban night swells, elastic, around me. The salty air from the Caudan waterfront scrapes my wounds and my skin, but I go on. I clear my own path. What was once deep within me—the slow drip of life that has slipped away and turned me into this livid creature sucking the night dry—no longer matters. The silence that fills me takes my breath away.
I’m getting into my stride. I no longer have a choice. I can only hear the stuttering beat of my footsteps. I hoist my schoolbag on my right shoulder; there aren’t just books in it tonight. There’s a reassuring bulge right next to my armpit: the blaze of false starts and missed arrivals. Soon enough it will no longer be a rhythm coursing through my veins. I’m going to leave my mark on a forehead, right between the eyebrows. I was born for this moment.
The novel then explains what led us to this moment, the first half of the novel introducing us to the four 17 year olds from Troumaron in whose voices the story is told.
Eve herself, from a very poor family, is a potentially promising student:
The school principal told me: Vous vous devez de réussir. Then she said it again on English: You owe it to yourself to succeed. And finally in Mauritian Creole: Pa gaspiy u lavi.
But at the outset of puberty, she allowed herself to be touched up by a boy in exchange for much needed paper and pencils, and now regularly trades her body for what she needs, including with one of the teachers.
Saadiq and Clelio are both members of a street gang that now dominates the neighbourhood after the local textile factory shut down:
Mothers disappear in a resigned haze. Fathers find in alcohol the virtue of authority. But they don’t have that anymore, authority. Authority, that’s us, the boys. We’ve recruited our troops like military leaders. We’ve carved out our portions of the neighbourhood. Once our parents stopped working, we became the masters.
Saad’s inner life was transformed when he encountered Rimbaud in a class:
I am your double. I am your single. I have split completely and totally in two: I was Saad, sitting on my stiff chair (or stiff is my transfixed chair), and I was someone else, unmoored, observing things but pushing them away through his thoughts, his defiance, his mortality.
He is hopelessly in love with Eve, much to the amusement of his fellow gang members who point out he is one of the few who has not actually slept with her. He writes poetic messages on the walls near her house, riffing on Rimbaud, for example, in the last message before the novel’s central event:
Your mouth in red memory opens for the sovereign man's blood.
But Eve herself is infatuated with another girl, Savita. Per Saadiq:
Eve and Savita are two sides of the same moon. Savita also lives in Troumaron, but there's a gulf between the two families. Savita's family acts like they don't belong in Troumaron, as if they were only there by accident. The accident of poverty of course.
Eve herself feels a communion with Savita that she feels Saadiq can’t understand. While Eve keeps herself very separate from the other youths, she sees Saadiq as one of the gang, despite his avowed poetic leanings:
The water and its swirls. Its lines, its marbling, its abrupt changes in direction. I spend hours watching the stream run endlessly. Colours slip beneath its clarity when the sun hits it straight on. And I do too, I slip forward, carried by time, by nothing.
Even Saad, who's a little different, who thinks about something other than spreading our thighs, is part of a gang. He's afraid to stand out, to be alone, to go off in another direction. He has no idea what's on is: this troubled water, this murky world, this faraway smile like a moonlit night, when the wind comes to whisper things that make us pensive and sad.
Saad talks about poetry when we're alone. But he has no idea about the poetry of women.
The only thing that keeps me alive is Savita.
Savita comments:
Eve's silence is the rumble deep within the volcano. It hurts me to see her so fragile when she thinks she's so strong. ... A loneliness so deep it was no different from death.
The fourth character Clelio has a similar personality split to Saad – an accomplished singer but with acknowledged self-destructive violent impulses.
I must have been born this way. I must have seen the future and decided I didn't like it. So when I see nails, I feel like swallowing them or forcing someone else to swallow them.
The second half of the short novel begins with a sudden event which changes the dynamics for all four characters .
The languid prose of the first half makes a shift to a more urgent tone: I found myself, carried onwards by the plot, reading it much faster than the first half, where I would reread paragraphs, in part to savour the writing, but in part to get a foothold in the (perhaps over-)lyrical text: one conscious choice Devi has made is to have her characters speak in a rather unrealistically poetic tone.
Two useful interviews between author and translator:
http://frenchculture.org/books/interv...
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/c...
3.5 stars but rounded up to 4 as this is a voice that deserves to be heard.
While this has been a strong year, it is still a relief, in Women in Translation Month to turn away from the Booker longlist and back to my real loves –translated fiction from UK independent small presses.
Les Fugitives, also publishers of Blue Self Portrait (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) have a very specific remit: to publish short, new writing by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English or in the UK and work in conjunction with the wonderful CB Editions, who focus. on short fiction, poetry, translations and other work which, as the Guardian noted, ‘might otherwise fall through the cracks between the big publishers’
Their highest profile success to date has been Eve out of Her Ruins, Jeffrey Zuckerman's translation of Ananda Devi's Ève de ses décombres, which, in its US edition published by Deep Vellum, won the CLMP Firecracker Award (for Independently and Self-Published fiction), as well as making the shortlist for the illustrious Best Translated Book Award and for the Albertine Prize (for translated contemporary French fiction).
It is also great to read a book from a new country for me: Mauritius. Although this is a rather different Mauritius to that with which tourists are familiar. As Devi herself says:
I was signing my books and someone would tell me that they were going on holiday to Mauritius and planned to buy my books, I would tell them to enjoy their holidays first and then buy the books!Eve out of Her Ruins is set in the fictional Troumaron, an impoverished area of Port-Louis: the name a deliberate pun as it could be read as “brown hole” or “hole for marrones” (escaped slaves).
Sometimes, when the neighbourhood is quiet, the island’s sounds seem different. Other kinds of music, less funereal tones, the clang of cash registers, the dazzle of development. The tourists scorn us without realizing it. Money has made them naïve. We cheat them out of a few rupees until they begin to mistrust our pleasant, false faces.
The country puts on its sky-blue dress, the better to seduce them. A marine perfume wafts from its crotch. From here we can’t see the island all dolled up, and their eyes, dazzled by the sun, can’t see us. As things should be.
The novel opens with an almost apocalyptic scene of a girl, Eve, limping through the derelict area, a gun in her satchel:
I limp, I hobble along on the steaming asphalt ,The urban night swells, elastic, around me. The salty air from the Caudan waterfront scrapes my wounds and my skin, but I go on. I clear my own path. What was once deep within me—the slow drip of life that has slipped away and turned me into this livid creature sucking the night dry—no longer matters. The silence that fills me takes my breath away.
I’m getting into my stride. I no longer have a choice. I can only hear the stuttering beat of my footsteps. I hoist my schoolbag on my right shoulder; there aren’t just books in it tonight. There’s a reassuring bulge right next to my armpit: the blaze of false starts and missed arrivals. Soon enough it will no longer be a rhythm coursing through my veins. I’m going to leave my mark on a forehead, right between the eyebrows. I was born for this moment.
The novel then explains what led us to this moment, the first half of the novel introducing us to the four 17 year olds from Troumaron in whose voices the story is told.
Eve herself, from a very poor family, is a potentially promising student:
The school principal told me: Vous vous devez de réussir. Then she said it again on English: You owe it to yourself to succeed. And finally in Mauritian Creole: Pa gaspiy u lavi.
But at the outset of puberty, she allowed herself to be touched up by a boy in exchange for much needed paper and pencils, and now regularly trades her body for what she needs, including with one of the teachers.
Saadiq and Clelio are both members of a street gang that now dominates the neighbourhood after the local textile factory shut down:
Mothers disappear in a resigned haze. Fathers find in alcohol the virtue of authority. But they don’t have that anymore, authority. Authority, that’s us, the boys. We’ve recruited our troops like military leaders. We’ve carved out our portions of the neighbourhood. Once our parents stopped working, we became the masters.
Saad’s inner life was transformed when he encountered Rimbaud in a class:
I am your double. I am your single. I have split completely and totally in two: I was Saad, sitting on my stiff chair (or stiff is my transfixed chair), and I was someone else, unmoored, observing things but pushing them away through his thoughts, his defiance, his mortality.
He is hopelessly in love with Eve, much to the amusement of his fellow gang members who point out he is one of the few who has not actually slept with her. He writes poetic messages on the walls near her house, riffing on Rimbaud, for example, in the last message before the novel’s central event:
Your mouth in red memory opens for the sovereign man's blood.
But Eve herself is infatuated with another girl, Savita. Per Saadiq:
Eve and Savita are two sides of the same moon. Savita also lives in Troumaron, but there's a gulf between the two families. Savita's family acts like they don't belong in Troumaron, as if they were only there by accident. The accident of poverty of course.
Eve herself feels a communion with Savita that she feels Saadiq can’t understand. While Eve keeps herself very separate from the other youths, she sees Saadiq as one of the gang, despite his avowed poetic leanings:
The water and its swirls. Its lines, its marbling, its abrupt changes in direction. I spend hours watching the stream run endlessly. Colours slip beneath its clarity when the sun hits it straight on. And I do too, I slip forward, carried by time, by nothing.
Even Saad, who's a little different, who thinks about something other than spreading our thighs, is part of a gang. He's afraid to stand out, to be alone, to go off in another direction. He has no idea what's on is: this troubled water, this murky world, this faraway smile like a moonlit night, when the wind comes to whisper things that make us pensive and sad.
Saad talks about poetry when we're alone. But he has no idea about the poetry of women.
The only thing that keeps me alive is Savita.
Savita comments:
Eve's silence is the rumble deep within the volcano. It hurts me to see her so fragile when she thinks she's so strong. ... A loneliness so deep it was no different from death.
The fourth character Clelio has a similar personality split to Saad – an accomplished singer but with acknowledged self-destructive violent impulses.
I must have been born this way. I must have seen the future and decided I didn't like it. So when I see nails, I feel like swallowing them or forcing someone else to swallow them.
The second half of the short novel begins with a sudden event which changes the dynamics for all four characters .
The languid prose of the first half makes a shift to a more urgent tone: I found myself, carried onwards by the plot, reading it much faster than the first half, where I would reread paragraphs, in part to savour the writing, but in part to get a foothold in the (perhaps over-)lyrical text: one conscious choice Devi has made is to have her characters speak in a rather unrealistically poetic tone.
I could have tried to have the four protagonists speak with a more contemporary youth jargon, but somehow I knew that it wouldn’t fit the tone of the novel. So I retained the poetry of their voices, which was the voice of their thoughts, the voice that no one ever hears from them because there is no one to listen.Jeffrey Zuckerman is to be commended on an excellent translation, respecting the use of both Mauritian Creole but also snatches of English words and syntax in Devi’s original (which itself reflects the trilingual Mauritian society) and he helpfully explains some of his choices in an afterword.
Two useful interviews between author and translator:
http://frenchculture.org/books/interv...
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/c...
3.5 stars but rounded up to 4 as this is a voice that deserves to be heard.
February 24, 2018
Sometimes, when the neighbourhood is quiet, the island’s sounds seem different. Other kinds of music, less funereal tones, the clang of cash registers, the dazzle of development. The tourists scorn us without realizing it. Money has made them naïve. We cheat them out of a few rupees until they begin to mistrust our pleasant, false faces.
The country puts on its sky-blue dress, the better to seduce them. A marine perfume wafts from its crotch. From here we can’t see the island all dolled up, and their eyes, dazzled by the sun, can’t see us. As things should be.
This book is jointly published by Les Fugitives (who I have come across due to their shortlisting for the Republic Of Consciousness Prize for Blue Self-Portrait and who are “dedicated to publishing short works by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English”) and CB Editions (run by Charles Boyle the other, under a psedonym of the wonderful An Overcoat: Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B. / Robinson diptych).
It is set on the beautiful Indian Ocean island of Mauritius – where I spent my honeymoon and a later holiday – and Island which as Jeffrey Zuckerman (whose translation here deserves huge credit) says in his illuminating translators notes is a “melange of languages, cultures and histories which parallels [the author’s] own background”.
Of course the Island as seen by tourists visiting its beautiful luxury hotels (the Saint Geran and Le Touessrok are particularly to be recommended) is very different from the Island experienced by its poorer inhabitants.
The sea by the luxury hotel gleams with hazy fire. Where we live, it looks like oil and smells like an armpit. People walk past, sit in a café, take in the air, drink beers, enjoy the weather and think about nothing. Eve once told me that we were on another planet. I think she’s right. Our sun and theirs aren’t the same”
And this novel, which somehow combines a languid and darkly poetic first part, with an urgent and visceral second part, is the other side of Mauritian culture.
The plot and details of the book are best described in Paul’s review here (including a hidden
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Jenny's review captures the deliberately poetic language used
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Overall this is an excellent novel – one that will stay with me for a long time, particularly the character of Eve.
July 6, 2022
Musi się ta książka jeszcze we mnie uleżeć, bo ciężko jest mi na jej temat napisać cokolwiek sensownego. Na pewno jest to mocna i pięknie napisana powieść, która zostanie mi w głowie na dłużej. Wspaniałe tłumaczenie i posłowie od tłumacza, które rozjaśnia sporo kwestii. Teraz jeszcze bardziej boję się sięgać po „Zielone sari”.
April 7, 2017
This books packs an incredibly powerful emotional punch. My review skills could never do it justice but luckily I have a friend who felt the same way I did and writes beautiful reviews check out Jenny's Review
March 12, 2017
While there were many stand-alone sentences that made me gasp and/or tugged on my heart, I did not like this book. The two central female characters moved me, but the characters of the men were incoherent. The writing was my biggest problem: the accumulation of emphatically poetic declaration after emphatically poetic declaration in lieu of more standard narration and characterization repulsed me by the end. I did finish, but unenjoyably so.
March 28, 2017
ARC review; also a post for Women in Translation month
This novella set in Mauritius is particularly suited to readers who favour fiction focusing on social justice issues such as feminism and the struggles of women in developing countries. Eve Out of Her Ruins has more powerful and interesting writing than most issue-based postcolonial litfic from mainstream publishers - but whilst I know that difficult lives like these happen almost everywhere, I’d have liked to hear a lot more about the actual place. Like too many Anglos, I don’t really know anything about Mauritius beyond dodos and threats from climate change. The story felt as if it could have been set in scores of countries around the globe, especially anywhere slums coexist with tourism by westerners - but the beautifully, yet simple descriptions always kept my attention:
The sea by the luxury hotel gleams with hazy fire. Where we live, it looks like oil and smells like an armpit. People walk past, sit at a café, take in the air, drink beers, enjoy the weather, and think about nothing. Eve once told me that we were on another planet. I think she’s right. Our sun and theirs aren’t the same.
The initial introduction, by Literature Nobel Prize Winner J.M.G. Le Clezio, is interesting but contains an abundance of spoilers; it could really do with being swapped with the translator's afterword - which contains none, but does feature useful information I'd wondered about throughout the novella. For example, author Ananda Devi has lived in France since 1989; I had reservations that her 2006 picture of contemporary Mauritius might be skewed by memories from decades ago; the afterword explains that she actually spends time on the island every year.
I imagined teenage Eve played by M.I.A.: she is defiant, tough-minded and sometimes arrogant, and refuses to accept other people’s ideas about her experiences, especially striking given her petite size. She feels that shaving her head will make her a lioness. Admittedly I've only known women who shaved their heads because of medical issues (and I once contemplated it purely for practicality and cheapness), and men who did so because they were going bald: but her fierce positivity about something that, in my own experience, people feel resigned to was incredibly striking.
As with many women in disadvantaged circumstances throughout history, Eve finds herself trading sex for favours and essential goods, and due to her capacity to dissociate, and her independent personality, feels less affected by this than one is “supposed to” – existing as more than a stereotypical victim, doing well at school and having a typical teenage social life with her best friend Savita - although it still does become an exhausting cycle that is difficult to escape.
Some contrast is given to Eve’s story by alternating her narratives with those of three other characters from her school year, including Savita. Saad is a studious boy and aspiring poet with a crush on Eve, who puts her on a pedestal rather than regarding her as the ‘town bike’ as many of his contemporaries do (anyone mildly acquainted with feminist theory will note that this is simply another constraint, madonna rather than whore), and Clelio is an angry, thuggish lad who gives the impression that he’s set for a life in and out of prison. The characters are very aware of their own symbolism and wider context, which perhaps doesn't sit so well with Clelio's personality - he almost seems to have been rewritten to accommodate it - but it suits Saad:
and they’ll all say isn’t that delightful, isn’t that marvelous, this disadvantaged kid who’s taken Rimbaud as his model, isn’t that a brilliant media and literary stroke, I’ll become a media sensation, and on top of that they’ll feel like they’re taking care of people’s needs, they’ll use me as a model for the other neighborhood kids who completely fuck up, but most of all, I’ll be heard and read, which is what counts, no matter how they take it and what they make of it, even if they exploit me, if that’s what they want, all I want, personally, is to get my head out of the water, to escape my fate, to simply be.
Half way through the book something happened that actually shocked me (and I'm not shocked that often by fiction). This is a very dark book - not the sort of dark I personally go for, and also more issue-led than I really like - but one that will surely be a five-star read for the right audience. Even if it's not absolutely your sort of thing, its brevity and use of language make it worthwhile and compelling.
This was an advance review copy from Edelweiss and publisher Deep Vellum.
The UK edition is published by micro-presses Les Fugitives and CB Editions, and is likewise released in September 2016.
This novella set in Mauritius is particularly suited to readers who favour fiction focusing on social justice issues such as feminism and the struggles of women in developing countries. Eve Out of Her Ruins has more powerful and interesting writing than most issue-based postcolonial litfic from mainstream publishers - but whilst I know that difficult lives like these happen almost everywhere, I’d have liked to hear a lot more about the actual place. Like too many Anglos, I don’t really know anything about Mauritius beyond dodos and threats from climate change. The story felt as if it could have been set in scores of countries around the globe, especially anywhere slums coexist with tourism by westerners - but the beautifully, yet simple descriptions always kept my attention:
The sea by the luxury hotel gleams with hazy fire. Where we live, it looks like oil and smells like an armpit. People walk past, sit at a café, take in the air, drink beers, enjoy the weather, and think about nothing. Eve once told me that we were on another planet. I think she’s right. Our sun and theirs aren’t the same.
The initial introduction, by Literature Nobel Prize Winner J.M.G. Le Clezio, is interesting but contains an abundance of spoilers; it could really do with being swapped with the translator's afterword - which contains none, but does feature useful information I'd wondered about throughout the novella. For example, author Ananda Devi has lived in France since 1989; I had reservations that her 2006 picture of contemporary Mauritius might be skewed by memories from decades ago; the afterword explains that she actually spends time on the island every year.
I imagined teenage Eve played by M.I.A.: she is defiant, tough-minded and sometimes arrogant, and refuses to accept other people’s ideas about her experiences, especially striking given her petite size. She feels that shaving her head will make her a lioness. Admittedly I've only known women who shaved their heads because of medical issues (and I once contemplated it purely for practicality and cheapness), and men who did so because they were going bald: but her fierce positivity about something that, in my own experience, people feel resigned to was incredibly striking.
As with many women in disadvantaged circumstances throughout history, Eve finds herself trading sex for favours and essential goods, and due to her capacity to dissociate, and her independent personality, feels less affected by this than one is “supposed to” – existing as more than a stereotypical victim, doing well at school and having a typical teenage social life with her best friend Savita - although it still does become an exhausting cycle that is difficult to escape.
Some contrast is given to Eve’s story by alternating her narratives with those of three other characters from her school year, including Savita. Saad is a studious boy and aspiring poet with a crush on Eve, who puts her on a pedestal rather than regarding her as the ‘town bike’ as many of his contemporaries do (anyone mildly acquainted with feminist theory will note that this is simply another constraint, madonna rather than whore), and Clelio is an angry, thuggish lad who gives the impression that he’s set for a life in and out of prison. The characters are very aware of their own symbolism and wider context, which perhaps doesn't sit so well with Clelio's personality - he almost seems to have been rewritten to accommodate it - but it suits Saad:
and they’ll all say isn’t that delightful, isn’t that marvelous, this disadvantaged kid who’s taken Rimbaud as his model, isn’t that a brilliant media and literary stroke, I’ll become a media sensation, and on top of that they’ll feel like they’re taking care of people’s needs, they’ll use me as a model for the other neighborhood kids who completely fuck up, but most of all, I’ll be heard and read, which is what counts, no matter how they take it and what they make of it, even if they exploit me, if that’s what they want, all I want, personally, is to get my head out of the water, to escape my fate, to simply be.
Half way through the book something happened that actually shocked me (and I'm not shocked that often by fiction). This is a very dark book - not the sort of dark I personally go for, and also more issue-led than I really like - but one that will surely be a five-star read for the right audience. Even if it's not absolutely your sort of thing, its brevity and use of language make it worthwhile and compelling.
This was an advance review copy from Edelweiss and publisher Deep Vellum.
The UK edition is published by micro-presses Les Fugitives and CB Editions, and is likewise released in September 2016.
May 1, 2024
3.75 ⭐️
“Ewa ze swych zgliszcz” to przejmująca historia czworga nastolatków, żyjących w ubogiej dzielnicy Port Louis na Mauritiusie. Ich życie mogłoby wyglądać zupełnie inaczej, gdyby tylko mieli szansę dorastać w innym miejscu, bo to właśnie pochodzenie zdaje się naznaczać ich los. Najbardziej przejmująca była dla mnie historia tytułowej Ewy, choć ta bohaterka niekoniecznie wysuwa się na pierwszy plan. To opowieść dorastającej dziewczyny, która nie ma nic, ale odkrywa, że jej najlepszą kartą przetargową jest jej własne ciało - “To tylko ciało. To się goi. Od tego to jest”.
To świetna powieść, o czym świadczą liczne nagrody, które zdobyła. Na bardziej osobistym poziomie zabrakło mi jednak większego połączenia z bohaterami, czułam się niejako oderwana od ich historii. Ten dystans nie pozwolił mi zachwycić się w pełni, ale zdecydowanie jestem zaintrygowana twórczością Anandy Devi, a przede wszystkim pięknem języka, jakim operuje. Warto też przeczytać posłowie od tłumacza, które wyjaśnia niektóre wątki, bo trzeba przyznać, że jest to książka dość trudna w czytaniu.
“Ewa ze swych zgliszcz” to przejmująca historia czworga nastolatków, żyjących w ubogiej dzielnicy Port Louis na Mauritiusie. Ich życie mogłoby wyglądać zupełnie inaczej, gdyby tylko mieli szansę dorastać w innym miejscu, bo to właśnie pochodzenie zdaje się naznaczać ich los. Najbardziej przejmująca była dla mnie historia tytułowej Ewy, choć ta bohaterka niekoniecznie wysuwa się na pierwszy plan. To opowieść dorastającej dziewczyny, która nie ma nic, ale odkrywa, że jej najlepszą kartą przetargową jest jej własne ciało - “To tylko ciało. To się goi. Od tego to jest”.
To świetna powieść, o czym świadczą liczne nagrody, które zdobyła. Na bardziej osobistym poziomie zabrakło mi jednak większego połączenia z bohaterami, czułam się niejako oderwana od ich historii. Ten dystans nie pozwolił mi zachwycić się w pełni, ale zdecydowanie jestem zaintrygowana twórczością Anandy Devi, a przede wszystkim pięknem języka, jakim operuje. Warto też przeczytać posłowie od tłumacza, które wyjaśnia niektóre wątki, bo trzeba przyznać, że jest to książka dość trudna w czytaniu.
December 23, 2018
I can see why so many readers loved this book but the uber-poetic language didnt work for me. I read a few passages in the French original and from that and the translator's note, I have to say that the English translation didn't convince me either.
October 21, 2017
Patru personaje. O vârstă: şaptesprezece ani. Patru monologuri interioare care, împreună, clădesc sub ochii noştri viaţa într-un cartier sărăcăcios al capitalei Port Louis. Acolo trăiesc laolaltă visele şi abrutizarea, dragostea şi promiscuitatea, furia şi neputinţa. Iar moartea nu e neapărat eliberatoare. Ca să poţi scăpa de acolo, trebuie să fii cu adevărat viu.
"O gumă. Un creion. O riglă. Începuturile sunt întotdeauna simple. Şi apoi deschidem ochii asupra unei lumi triste, asupra unui univers bolnav. Privirea celorlalţi, care judecă şi condamnă. Am şaptesprezece ani şi mi-am hotărât viaţa."
"Într-o zi ne trezim şi viitorul a dispărut. Cerul maschează ferestrele. Noaptea îşi face intrarea în trupuri şi refuză să iasă din ele."
"Ea este soarele intrat în trupul meu. Ea este urgenţa a ceea ce scriu. Portretul lui Eve pe ecourile camerei mele. Fraze care o desenează, care o declină. Iubesc."
"Nu sunt supusă regretului. Ar însemna să pierd un timp preţios pentru viaţă. Dar singura întrebare adevărată este: oare sunt supusă vieţii?"
Pe scurt: citiţi această carte. Lăsaţi-o să vă fie surâs. Şi lacrimă. Şi tatuaj.
"O gumă. Un creion. O riglă. Începuturile sunt întotdeauna simple. Şi apoi deschidem ochii asupra unei lumi triste, asupra unui univers bolnav. Privirea celorlalţi, care judecă şi condamnă. Am şaptesprezece ani şi mi-am hotărât viaţa."
"Într-o zi ne trezim şi viitorul a dispărut. Cerul maschează ferestrele. Noaptea îşi face intrarea în trupuri şi refuză să iasă din ele."
"Ea este soarele intrat în trupul meu. Ea este urgenţa a ceea ce scriu. Portretul lui Eve pe ecourile camerei mele. Fraze care o desenează, care o declină. Iubesc."
"Nu sunt supusă regretului. Ar însemna să pierd un timp preţios pentru viaţă. Dar singura întrebare adevărată este: oare sunt supusă vieţii?"
Pe scurt: citiţi această carte. Lăsaţi-o să vă fie surâs. Şi lacrimă. Şi tatuaj.
February 24, 2021
Ananda Devi jest pisarką wybitną i chciałabym, żeby czytali ją wszyscy. "Ewa..." nie zrobiła na mnie tak wielkiego wrażenia jak "Zielone Sari", chociaż wrażenie jest nadal przeogromne.
Język i metaforyka szarżujące, na granicy pretensji, ale szybko okazują się doskonale ujętym głosem młodych ludzi z biednej dzielnicy, zbiorem klisz, zawłaszczaniem i rozszczepianiem języka, krnąbrną trawestacją.
Relacje między postaciami - kolizje, zazębienia, symbole.
Patriarchat - pełen przemocy, bolesny, choć właściwie złamany, wiarygodny
Studium biednej dzielnicy i jej kozła ofiarnego - przejmujące, drapieżne, zwierzęce, wielowymiarowe, nieprotekcjonalne
Nie jestem tylko fanką posłowia tłumacza, któremu, mimo ogromnej biegłości w temacie, zabrakło psychologicznego zrozumienia Ewy i nieco śmielszego feministycznego spojrzenia.
Język i metaforyka szarżujące, na granicy pretensji, ale szybko okazują się doskonale ujętym głosem młodych ludzi z biednej dzielnicy, zbiorem klisz, zawłaszczaniem i rozszczepianiem języka, krnąbrną trawestacją.
Relacje między postaciami - kolizje, zazębienia, symbole.
Patriarchat - pełen przemocy, bolesny, choć właściwie złamany, wiarygodny
Studium biednej dzielnicy i jej kozła ofiarnego - przejmujące, drapieżne, zwierzęce, wielowymiarowe, nieprotekcjonalne
Nie jestem tylko fanką posłowia tłumacza, któremu, mimo ogromnej biegłości w temacie, zabrakło psychologicznego zrozumienia Ewy i nieco śmielszego feministycznego spojrzenia.
October 2, 2018
Astonishing, devastating, powerful. This book blew me away.
March 1, 2021
Life isn’t easy. Life isn’t easy for those who live on the margins. It isn’t easy when you are surrounded by poverty and bitterness. How do you love when all you have seen is hate? How do you bring yourself to live then? Eve does that. She lives, on her terms. She doesn’t live, she merely survives, day after day, trying to get out. Hoping for a better future, till she doesn’t. You witness her story, her life, and hope and pray that she is redeemed – that others are as well, that at seventeen and perhaps a little older, they deserve better, but you don’t know how the story will turn out, and where will it go.
Eve Out of Her Ruins is set in Troumaron, an impoverish area of Port-Louis, the capital of Mauritius Island. You see what you haven’t seen or thought of Mauritius to be. There is fear, there is violence, there is sexual assault, the air heavy with stench of yearning to get away, of dashed dreams, and broken hopes.
We meet four youngsters – fighting to survive. Eve, the seventeen-year-old that time forgot to nourish, that kindness overlooked, who moves from one man to another, always looking to get out but doesn’t want to. Savita, Eve’s soulmate in a sense, the only one who loves her selflessly. Saad, who is in love with the idea of Eve – who wants to save her and knows that she will never love him back. Clélio, a rebel waiting for life to happen to him, waiting for his brother to call him to France, waiting almost perpetually.
Through these characters Ananda Devi creates a world that is raw, belligerent, sometimes tender, warily poetic, and even forgiving. The world of Troumaron that is exploding at the seams – waiting to burst with energy that will only ruin these four. Ananda Devi’s characters are similar and so dissimilar to each other. In the sense they are all stuck, all perhaps wanting out, and yet don’t even know it. Her writing hits you hard. The poetry and the prose merge beautifully – they make you imagine as you read – the characters became more real than ever, and their emotions became mine.
Eve Out of Her Ruins is a small book with so much to unpack and undo. The lives of people on the margins, the lives they lead forever fluctuating between hope and hopelessness, brought out beautifully by the translator, Jeffrey Zuckerman. I could sense the French, and the Mauritian Creole rolling off my tongue as I attempted to read it when encountered it in the pages. This is a book that is not to be missed. I urge you to read it. Ananda Devi, we need more writing from you. A lot more.
Eve Out of Her Ruins is set in Troumaron, an impoverish area of Port-Louis, the capital of Mauritius Island. You see what you haven’t seen or thought of Mauritius to be. There is fear, there is violence, there is sexual assault, the air heavy with stench of yearning to get away, of dashed dreams, and broken hopes.
We meet four youngsters – fighting to survive. Eve, the seventeen-year-old that time forgot to nourish, that kindness overlooked, who moves from one man to another, always looking to get out but doesn’t want to. Savita, Eve’s soulmate in a sense, the only one who loves her selflessly. Saad, who is in love with the idea of Eve – who wants to save her and knows that she will never love him back. Clélio, a rebel waiting for life to happen to him, waiting for his brother to call him to France, waiting almost perpetually.
Through these characters Ananda Devi creates a world that is raw, belligerent, sometimes tender, warily poetic, and even forgiving. The world of Troumaron that is exploding at the seams – waiting to burst with energy that will only ruin these four. Ananda Devi’s characters are similar and so dissimilar to each other. In the sense they are all stuck, all perhaps wanting out, and yet don’t even know it. Her writing hits you hard. The poetry and the prose merge beautifully – they make you imagine as you read – the characters became more real than ever, and their emotions became mine.
Eve Out of Her Ruins is a small book with so much to unpack and undo. The lives of people on the margins, the lives they lead forever fluctuating between hope and hopelessness, brought out beautifully by the translator, Jeffrey Zuckerman. I could sense the French, and the Mauritian Creole rolling off my tongue as I attempted to read it when encountered it in the pages. This is a book that is not to be missed. I urge you to read it. Ananda Devi, we need more writing from you. A lot more.
March 5, 2021
"We are practically children, sitting on our parapet. And she, with that flower of violence on her cheek, feels old. She gets up and walks a few steps in front of me. She seems completely off-balance. She's dancing and falling at the same time. I hold out my hand to catch her."
#ReadtheWorld21 (@end.notes & @anovelfamily) February prompt was East and Southern Africa. It's my second book by Ananda Devi, a Mauritian writer of South Indian descent.
This one has been bookstagram's darling recently & all the raving is frankly justified. There is an incredible urgency to her writing, a sheer immediacy to the events and lives Devi viscerally describes. Her book explores how people without privileges are easily effaced from the dominant narrative & reduced to the margins, how personhood is constructed in a turbulent society, how coming of age can be violent and messy. The first part is slow and relaxed. It reaches a brutal incident that provides the second part a greater urgency.
The language throughout the novel is highly poetic, lyrical, suffused with bold images as Devi relates the murky inner lives of four teens. They are so helpless yet full of dreams, existing day to day. They embody passive rage against the machine, against complacency, against themselves. Savita & Eve in pparticular also highlight the doubly effaced female body. Zuckerman's very brilliant translation emphasizes the constant tussle between movement and stagnation as well. Devi's novel seethes, catches flame, takes you completely unaware. It is a stunning book that will reward rereading.
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
March 7, 2021
Una stanza buia, poche sedie e odore di chiuso. Al centro una lanterna magica: proietta immagini - dipinte a mano su piccole lastre di vetro - contro la parete sporca. Una pausa, un pensiero. Poi quella piccola finestrella viene cambiata con quella successiva: un altro stile, un'altra stanza, ma la stessa storia.
In scena, stasera, un crollo.
Questa è l'impressione che ho avuto leggendo questo breve romanzo di Ananda Devi.
Stacchi decisi tra frasi dalle pennellate decise. Lo stile fa molto, ma deve piacere: lirico e confessionale, tutto carne e sangue. Ci sono frasi di una bellezza e di un'onestà dolorosa, ma, sì, alla lunga il susseguirsi di metafore e aforismi può stancare.
La violenza mette in moto un quartiere malfamato di Port Louis, altrimenti in stasi: nient'altro smuove quel degrado, quasi fosse sporcizia accumulata in anni di inettitudine. Una periferia incrostata e senza pietà: puoi essere giovane, inesperto, ingenuo e talentuoso, il suo dazio devi pagarlo comunque.
Eppure il male riesce anche in questo, anche nel terremotare questo sedimento di inedia. Ma è possibile percorrere tutta la strada fin giù nell'inferno e trovarci, in fondo, un po' di speranza?
"I figli hanno ali di piombo e si ostinano a credere di saper volare, finché non li ritrovi, rifiuti in un mucchio di rifiuti"
In scena, stasera, un crollo.
Questa è l'impressione che ho avuto leggendo questo breve romanzo di Ananda Devi.
Stacchi decisi tra frasi dalle pennellate decise. Lo stile fa molto, ma deve piacere: lirico e confessionale, tutto carne e sangue. Ci sono frasi di una bellezza e di un'onestà dolorosa, ma, sì, alla lunga il susseguirsi di metafore e aforismi può stancare.
La violenza mette in moto un quartiere malfamato di Port Louis, altrimenti in stasi: nient'altro smuove quel degrado, quasi fosse sporcizia accumulata in anni di inettitudine. Una periferia incrostata e senza pietà: puoi essere giovane, inesperto, ingenuo e talentuoso, il suo dazio devi pagarlo comunque.
Eppure il male riesce anche in questo, anche nel terremotare questo sedimento di inedia. Ma è possibile percorrere tutta la strada fin giù nell'inferno e trovarci, in fondo, un po' di speranza?
"I figli hanno ali di piombo e si ostinano a credere di saper volare, finché non li ritrovi, rifiuti in un mucchio di rifiuti"
June 9, 2017
I don't remember the last time I have read a book with so many beautiful passages. This is certainly not a light read, but it's worth going through the dark places when the writing is so breathtaking. I loved this book.
"I read as if books could loosen the noose tightening around my throat. I read to understand that there is somewhere else. A dimension where possibilities shimmer."
"I read as if books could loosen the noose tightening around my throat. I read to understand that there is somewhere else. A dimension where possibilities shimmer."
May 16, 2020
The writing felt a little lazy to me, and the story too, where I could predict word and sentence and plot points before they happened. Neither realistic enough nor poetic enough--it landed somewhere in a muddled middle.
November 5, 2023
4,5 su 5.
Ananda Devi, scrittrice mauriziana di origine indiane, ci conduce per mano all’interno di un romanzo ardente dal lirismo spiccato e dalla prosa affilata e asciutta.
Partiamo dal titolo: Eva dalle sue rovine.
Eva è colei che regge le redini di questo romanzo - una diciassettenne dalla personalità affascinante e contraddittoria - e le rovine che la riguardano sono duplici; simboleggiano tanto quelle del quartiere in cui è cresciuta, quanto quelle del suo corpo straziato.
Coralmente diviso tra le voci dei quattro protagonisti - Eva, Sadiq, Clélio e Savita - si alternano nel raccontare ognuno la sua parte di storia, scopriamo che sono legati a doppio nodo da un evento sconvolgente: un omicidio.
Sono diversissimi tra loro, ma ad accumunarli c’è il loro essere irrequieti. Sentono di non aver ancora trovato il proprio posto nel mondo e si ingegnano, talvolta in modi distruttivi, a trovare una soluzione per lasciarsi finalmente quel posto alle spalle e andare avanti.
Per tutta la durata della lettura regna un’atmosfera minacciosa, frugando tra le pieghe della vita di questi quattro adolescenti l’autrice tratteggia un racconto fulminante sul dolore dell'anima e del corpo.
Disincanto e sogni infranti fin dall’infanzia vengono narrati con abbagliante profondità e poeticità, spogliandosi di qualsiasi artificio letterario.
Eva dalle sue rovine è un libro che si risolve in poche pagine, ma sotto l'aspetto narrativo e affabulatorio si rivela davvero potente.
Ananda Devi, scrittrice mauriziana di origine indiane, ci conduce per mano all’interno di un romanzo ardente dal lirismo spiccato e dalla prosa affilata e asciutta.
Partiamo dal titolo: Eva dalle sue rovine.
Eva è colei che regge le redini di questo romanzo - una diciassettenne dalla personalità affascinante e contraddittoria - e le rovine che la riguardano sono duplici; simboleggiano tanto quelle del quartiere in cui è cresciuta, quanto quelle del suo corpo straziato.
Sono in negoziato permanente. Il mio corpo è uno scalo. Intere parti sono navigate. Con il tempo sono fiorite bruciature, screpolature. Ognuno lascia il suo segno, marca il suo territorio. Ho diciassette anni e me ne frego. Compro il mio futuro.
Troumaron è, infatti, quanto di più lontano dall’immaginario collettivo quando ci si riferisce alle Mauritius, è un quartiere poco rispettabile di Saint Louis e con mirate frasi riusciamo a percepire fin da subito la miseria e il degrado che infestano questa zona di periferia che è il worldbuilding nel quale si muovono i nostri personaggi.Coralmente diviso tra le voci dei quattro protagonisti - Eva, Sadiq, Clélio e Savita - si alternano nel raccontare ognuno la sua parte di storia, scopriamo che sono legati a doppio nodo da un evento sconvolgente: un omicidio.
Sono diversissimi tra loro, ma ad accumunarli c’è il loro essere irrequieti. Sentono di non aver ancora trovato il proprio posto nel mondo e si ingegnano, talvolta in modi distruttivi, a trovare una soluzione per lasciarsi finalmente quel posto alle spalle e andare avanti.
Per tutta la durata della lettura regna un’atmosfera minacciosa, frugando tra le pieghe della vita di questi quattro adolescenti l’autrice tratteggia un racconto fulminante sul dolore dell'anima e del corpo.
Disincanto e sogni infranti fin dall’infanzia vengono narrati con abbagliante profondità e poeticità, spogliandosi di qualsiasi artificio letterario.
Eva dalle sue rovine è un libro che si risolve in poche pagine, ma sotto l'aspetto narrativo e affabulatorio si rivela davvero potente.
April 22, 2024
Eve realizes from a young age that her body is fair currency. Saadiq is a budding poet inspired by Rimbaud's words and enamored with Eve, but Eve’s heart is elsewhere. Savita, Eve's lover, is murdered and her body dumped in a rubbish bin. Clélio is a well-known juvenile offender who conveniently fits the guilty profile.
Four characters. One age: seventeen years. Four monologues which paints a picture of life in fictional Troumaron, of the capital Port Louis. French for "brown hole", Troumaron is described as a funnel "𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥'𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘧𝘭𝘰𝘸" - a far cry from the picturesque beaches and turquoise waters common in tourist brochures.
Ananda Devi vividly depicts the dented destinies of these four representatives of the new Mauritian generation. "𝘖𝘶𝘳 𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘳, 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥, 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘣𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥, 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘺..." she writes early on in the book, vaguely hinting at the trajectory of this story's fatal ending. Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman, 𝘌𝘷𝘦 𝘖𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘏𝘦𝘳 𝘙𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘴 is an intense novel about the the fates of young people as they try to free themselves from a system that's designed to bring them to their knees.
"𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘨𝘰 𝘪𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘯? 𝘛𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥. 𝘞𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘵. 𝘞𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘸𝘦 𝘧𝘭𝘺. 𝘞𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘶𝘯𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘸𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘦."
On the surface, it reads like a Shakespearean tragedy. But read between the melodious lines and you'll find a biblical retelling inspired by Rimbaud's life, critiques on colonialism, questions on artistic appropriation, and confrontation of the literary canon by postcolonial writers.
A sinking story told in many broken voices, rooted in bitterness and rage, covered by a poetic filter which adds gentleness and grace to an extremely brutal reality.
Four characters. One age: seventeen years. Four monologues which paints a picture of life in fictional Troumaron, of the capital Port Louis. French for "brown hole", Troumaron is described as a funnel "𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥'𝘴 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘧𝘭𝘰𝘸" - a far cry from the picturesque beaches and turquoise waters common in tourist brochures.
Ananda Devi vividly depicts the dented destinies of these four representatives of the new Mauritian generation. "𝘖𝘶𝘳 𝘭𝘢𝘪𝘳, 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥, 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘣𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥, 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘺..." she writes early on in the book, vaguely hinting at the trajectory of this story's fatal ending. Translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman, 𝘌𝘷𝘦 𝘖𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘏𝘦𝘳 𝘙𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘴 is an intense novel about the the fates of young people as they try to free themselves from a system that's designed to bring them to their knees.
"𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘨𝘰 𝘪𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘯? 𝘛𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘴𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥, 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥. 𝘞𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘪𝘵. 𝘞𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘸𝘦 𝘧𝘭𝘺. 𝘞𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘶𝘯𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘸𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘦."
On the surface, it reads like a Shakespearean tragedy. But read between the melodious lines and you'll find a biblical retelling inspired by Rimbaud's life, critiques on colonialism, questions on artistic appropriation, and confrontation of the literary canon by postcolonial writers.
A sinking story told in many broken voices, rooted in bitterness and rage, covered by a poetic filter which adds gentleness and grace to an extremely brutal reality.
November 8, 2016
This book is the limax of unsettling thoughts that crawls up your spine and curls in the nape of your neck for a haunting sleep. This book is a must-read for every woman. This book is fear caught in a bottle and disgust trapped in a box. This book and others like it are why I read. It made me look inside myself and shiver at the sight.
June 29, 2020
3.5 rounded up
May 8, 2021
2021 YA edition of a book originally published in English translation in 2017 by Les Fugitives in conjunction with CB Editions (two of our finest publishers).
From my review of the original:
In my head I make a promise: Eve, I will bring you out of your ruins.
While this has been a strong year, it is still a relief, in Women in Translation Month to turn away from the Booker longlist and back to my real loves –translated fiction from UK independent small presses.
Les Fugitives, also publishers of Blue Self Portrait (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) have a very specific remit: to publish short, new writing by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English or in the UK and work in conjunction with the wonderful CB Editions, who focus. on short fiction, poetry, translations and other work which, as the Guardian noted, ‘might otherwise fall through the cracks between the big publishers’
Their highest profile success to date has been Eve out of Her Ruins, Jeffrey Zuckerman's translation of Ananda Devi's Ève de ses décombres, which, in its US edition published by Deep Vellum, won the CLMP Firecracker Award (for Independently and Self-Published fiction), as well as making the shortlist for the illustrious Best Translated Book Award and for the Albertine Prize (for translated contemporary French fiction).
It is also great to read a book from a new country for me: Mauritius. Although this is a rather different Mauritius to that with which tourists are familiar. As Devi herself says:
Sometimes, when the neighbourhood is quiet, the island’s sounds seem different. Other kinds of music, less funereal tones, the clang of cash registers, the dazzle of development. The tourists scorn us without realizing it. Money has made them naïve. We cheat them out of a few rupees until they begin to mistrust our pleasant, false faces.
The country puts on its sky-blue dress, the better to seduce them. A marine perfume wafts from its crotch. From here we can’t see the island all dolled up, and their eyes, dazzled by the sun, can’t see us. As things should be.
The novel opens with an almost apocalyptic scene of a girl, Eve, limping through the derelict area, a gun in her satchel:
I limp, I hobble along on the steaming asphalt ,The urban night swells, elastic, around me. The salty air from the Caudan waterfront scrapes my wounds and my skin, but I go on. I clear my own path. What was once deep within me—the slow drip of life that has slipped away and turned me into this livid creature sucking the night dry—no longer matters. The silence that fills me takes my breath away.
I’m getting into my stride. I no longer have a choice. I can only hear the stuttering beat of my footsteps. I hoist my schoolbag on my right shoulder; there aren’t just books in it tonight. There’s a reassuring bulge right next to my armpit: the blaze of false starts and missed arrivals. Soon enough it will no longer be a rhythm coursing through my veins. I’m going to leave my mark on a forehead, right between the eyebrows. I was born for this moment.
The novel then explains what led us to this moment, the first half of the novel introducing us to the four 17 year olds from Troumaron in whose voices the story is told.
Eve herself, from a very poor family, is a potentially promising student:
The school principal told me: Vous vous devez de réussir. Then she said it again on English: You owe it to yourself to succeed. And finally in Mauritian Creole: Pa gaspiy u lavi.
But at the outset of puberty, she allowed herself to be touched up by a boy in exchange for much needed paper and pencils, and now regularly trades her body for what she needs, including with one of the teachers.
Saadiq and Clelio are both members of a street gang that now dominates the neighbourhood after the local textile factory shut down:
Mothers disappear in a resigned haze. Fathers find in alcohol the virtue of authority. But they don’t have that anymore, authority. Authority, that’s us, the boys. We’ve recruited our troops like military leaders. We’ve carved out our portions of the neighbourhood. Once our parents stopped working, we became the masters.
Saad’s inner life was transformed when he encountered Rimbaud in a class:
I am your double. I am your single. I have split completely and totally in two: I was Saad, sitting on my stiff chair (or stiff is my transfixed chair), and I was someone else, unmoored, observing things but pushing them away through his thoughts, his defiance, his mortality.
He is hopelessly in love with Eve, much to the amusement of his fellow gang members who point out he is one of the few who has not actually slept with her. He writes poetic messages on the walls near her house, riffing on Rimbaud, for example, in the last message before the novel’s central event:
Your mouth in red memory opens for the sovereign man's blood.
But Eve herself is infatuated with another girl, Savita. Per Saadiq:
Eve and Savita are two sides of the same moon. Savita also lives in Troumaron, but there's a gulf between the two families. Savita's family acts like they don't belong in Troumaron, as if they were only there by accident. The accident of poverty of course.
Eve herself feels a communion with Savita that she feels Saadiq can’t understand. While Eve keeps herself very separate from the other youths, she sees Saadiq as one of the gang, despite his avowed poetic leanings:
The water and its swirls. Its lines, its marbling, its abrupt changes in direction. I spend hours watching the stream run endlessly. Colours slip beneath its clarity when the sun hits it straight on. And I do too, I slip forward, carried by time, by nothing.
Even Saad, who's a little different, who thinks about something other than spreading our thighs, is part of a gang. He's afraid to stand out, to be alone, to go off in another direction. He has no idea what's on is: this troubled water, this murky world, this faraway smile like a moonlit night, when the wind comes to whisper things that make us pensive and sad.
Saad talks about poetry when we're alone. But he has no idea about the poetry of women.
The only thing that keeps me alive is Savita.
Savita comments:
Eve's silence is the rumble deep within the volcano. It hurts me to see her so fragile when she thinks she's so strong. ... A loneliness so deep it was no different from death.
The fourth character Clelio has a similar personality split to Saad – an accomplished singer but with acknowledged self-destructive violent impulses.
I must have been born this way. I must have seen the future and decided I didn't like it. So when I see nails, I feel like swallowing them or forcing someone else to swallow them.
The second half of the short novel begins with a sudden event which changes the dynamics for all four characters .
The languid prose of the first half makes a shift to a more urgent tone: I found myself, carried onwards by the plot, reading it much faster than the first half, where I would reread paragraphs, in part to savour the writing, but in part to get a foothold in the (perhaps over-)lyrical text: one conscious choice Devi has made is to have her characters speak in a rather unrealistically poetic tone.
Two useful interviews between author and translator:
http://frenchculture.org/books/interv...
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/c...
3.5 stars but rounded up to 4 as this is a voice that deserves to be heard.
From my review of the original:
In my head I make a promise: Eve, I will bring you out of your ruins.
While this has been a strong year, it is still a relief, in Women in Translation Month to turn away from the Booker longlist and back to my real loves –translated fiction from UK independent small presses.
Les Fugitives, also publishers of Blue Self Portrait (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) have a very specific remit: to publish short, new writing by award-winning francophone female authors previously unavailable in English or in the UK and work in conjunction with the wonderful CB Editions, who focus. on short fiction, poetry, translations and other work which, as the Guardian noted, ‘might otherwise fall through the cracks between the big publishers’
Their highest profile success to date has been Eve out of Her Ruins, Jeffrey Zuckerman's translation of Ananda Devi's Ève de ses décombres, which, in its US edition published by Deep Vellum, won the CLMP Firecracker Award (for Independently and Self-Published fiction), as well as making the shortlist for the illustrious Best Translated Book Award and for the Albertine Prize (for translated contemporary French fiction).
It is also great to read a book from a new country for me: Mauritius. Although this is a rather different Mauritius to that with which tourists are familiar. As Devi herself says:
I was signing my books and someone would tell me that they were going on holiday to Mauritius and planned to buy my books, I would tell them to enjoy their holidays first and then buy the books!Eve out of Her Ruins is set in the fictional Troumaron, an impoverished area of Port-Louis: the name a deliberate pun as it could be read as “brown hole” or “hole for marrones” (escaped slaves).
Sometimes, when the neighbourhood is quiet, the island’s sounds seem different. Other kinds of music, less funereal tones, the clang of cash registers, the dazzle of development. The tourists scorn us without realizing it. Money has made them naïve. We cheat them out of a few rupees until they begin to mistrust our pleasant, false faces.
The country puts on its sky-blue dress, the better to seduce them. A marine perfume wafts from its crotch. From here we can’t see the island all dolled up, and their eyes, dazzled by the sun, can’t see us. As things should be.
The novel opens with an almost apocalyptic scene of a girl, Eve, limping through the derelict area, a gun in her satchel:
I limp, I hobble along on the steaming asphalt ,The urban night swells, elastic, around me. The salty air from the Caudan waterfront scrapes my wounds and my skin, but I go on. I clear my own path. What was once deep within me—the slow drip of life that has slipped away and turned me into this livid creature sucking the night dry—no longer matters. The silence that fills me takes my breath away.
I’m getting into my stride. I no longer have a choice. I can only hear the stuttering beat of my footsteps. I hoist my schoolbag on my right shoulder; there aren’t just books in it tonight. There’s a reassuring bulge right next to my armpit: the blaze of false starts and missed arrivals. Soon enough it will no longer be a rhythm coursing through my veins. I’m going to leave my mark on a forehead, right between the eyebrows. I was born for this moment.
The novel then explains what led us to this moment, the first half of the novel introducing us to the four 17 year olds from Troumaron in whose voices the story is told.
Eve herself, from a very poor family, is a potentially promising student:
The school principal told me: Vous vous devez de réussir. Then she said it again on English: You owe it to yourself to succeed. And finally in Mauritian Creole: Pa gaspiy u lavi.
But at the outset of puberty, she allowed herself to be touched up by a boy in exchange for much needed paper and pencils, and now regularly trades her body for what she needs, including with one of the teachers.
Saadiq and Clelio are both members of a street gang that now dominates the neighbourhood after the local textile factory shut down:
Mothers disappear in a resigned haze. Fathers find in alcohol the virtue of authority. But they don’t have that anymore, authority. Authority, that’s us, the boys. We’ve recruited our troops like military leaders. We’ve carved out our portions of the neighbourhood. Once our parents stopped working, we became the masters.
Saad’s inner life was transformed when he encountered Rimbaud in a class:
I am your double. I am your single. I have split completely and totally in two: I was Saad, sitting on my stiff chair (or stiff is my transfixed chair), and I was someone else, unmoored, observing things but pushing them away through his thoughts, his defiance, his mortality.
He is hopelessly in love with Eve, much to the amusement of his fellow gang members who point out he is one of the few who has not actually slept with her. He writes poetic messages on the walls near her house, riffing on Rimbaud, for example, in the last message before the novel’s central event:
Your mouth in red memory opens for the sovereign man's blood.
But Eve herself is infatuated with another girl, Savita. Per Saadiq:
Eve and Savita are two sides of the same moon. Savita also lives in Troumaron, but there's a gulf between the two families. Savita's family acts like they don't belong in Troumaron, as if they were only there by accident. The accident of poverty of course.
Eve herself feels a communion with Savita that she feels Saadiq can’t understand. While Eve keeps herself very separate from the other youths, she sees Saadiq as one of the gang, despite his avowed poetic leanings:
The water and its swirls. Its lines, its marbling, its abrupt changes in direction. I spend hours watching the stream run endlessly. Colours slip beneath its clarity when the sun hits it straight on. And I do too, I slip forward, carried by time, by nothing.
Even Saad, who's a little different, who thinks about something other than spreading our thighs, is part of a gang. He's afraid to stand out, to be alone, to go off in another direction. He has no idea what's on is: this troubled water, this murky world, this faraway smile like a moonlit night, when the wind comes to whisper things that make us pensive and sad.
Saad talks about poetry when we're alone. But he has no idea about the poetry of women.
The only thing that keeps me alive is Savita.
Savita comments:
Eve's silence is the rumble deep within the volcano. It hurts me to see her so fragile when she thinks she's so strong. ... A loneliness so deep it was no different from death.
The fourth character Clelio has a similar personality split to Saad – an accomplished singer but with acknowledged self-destructive violent impulses.
I must have been born this way. I must have seen the future and decided I didn't like it. So when I see nails, I feel like swallowing them or forcing someone else to swallow them.
The second half of the short novel begins with a sudden event which changes the dynamics for all four characters .
The languid prose of the first half makes a shift to a more urgent tone: I found myself, carried onwards by the plot, reading it much faster than the first half, where I would reread paragraphs, in part to savour the writing, but in part to get a foothold in the (perhaps over-)lyrical text: one conscious choice Devi has made is to have her characters speak in a rather unrealistically poetic tone.
I could have tried to have the four protagonists speak with a more contemporary youth jargon, but somehow I knew that it wouldn’t fit the tone of the novel. So I retained the poetry of their voices, which was the voice of their thoughts, the voice that no one ever hears from them because there is no one to listen.Jeffrey Zuckerman is to be commended on an excellent translation, respecting the use of both Mauritian Creole but also snatches of English words and syntax in Devi’s original (which itself reflects the trilingual Mauritian society) and he helpfully explains some of his choices in an afterword.
Two useful interviews between author and translator:
http://frenchculture.org/books/interv...
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/c...
3.5 stars but rounded up to 4 as this is a voice that deserves to be heard.
September 12, 2016
neither of us is innocent, and i hate the world for it.the second novel from mauritian author ananda devi to be translated into english, eve out of her ruins (ève de ses décombres) is the powerful story of four intertwined teenage lives contending with poverty, dispossession, alienation, violence, and their own forlorn futures. set within the indigent troumaron neighborhood of the port louis capital city, devi's novel is told in four distinct voices — an oral biography of longing, heartbreak, frustration, anger, resentment, sexualization, and neglect.
i don't believe in anything. but i suffer all the same.devi's titular character wields her sexuality as a means to an end; saadiq (saad) is an aspiring poet for whom eve's affection is just beyond reach; savita, eve's truest friend, longs for escape; clélio admires his expatriate brother and also dreams of liberation. together, their ensemble narrative works to great effect in portraying the oppressive ghetto milieu they each must exist within. their youth and socioeconomic disadvantage belie the very real adult challenges they're forced to confront daily.
i've always lived there. i was born a refugee. like everyone else who's grown up in the yellow shadows of these buildings, i've never understood their monstrous edges. i never saw the gaps born beneath our feet, separating us from the world. i played with eve. we called her the skeleton because she was so thin, but also to mask an unspoken affection. we played at war until we found ourselves at war.eve out of her ruins is a sorrowful, grief-filled tale. a coming-of-age story where coming-of-age is hardly guaranteed. disappointment, dejection, suffering, monotony, and a toxic disregard blanket the powder keg neighborhood where tension, foreboding, and volatility loom large in hearts and minds alike. colliding lives render futures nonredeemable.
i read in secret, all the time. i read in the toilets, i read in the middle of the night, i read as if books could loosen the noose tightening around my throat. i read to understand that there is somewhere else. a dimension where possibilities shimmer.devi's gifted, poetic, and undulating prose is her novel's greatest asset. strong, authentic characters and an excruciating plot enrich an already potent tale. eve out of her ruins, however rueful and without redemption, is a moving, unsettling story. like the waves forever crashing against this small island nation, the slow yet inescapable erosion of hope and possibility are deftly on display. devi has crafted a slim, singular work of fiction — one which unabashedly offers up an alloy of anger and anguish, forbidding us from looking away, stepping over, or ignoring altogether.
i am seventeen years old and i don't give a fuck. i'm buying my future.
*translated from the french by jeffrey zuckerman (volodine [in 2017])
**with an introduction by nobel laureate jmg le clezio:
ananda devi—who knows the cost of waging war against institutional wrongs and capricious fate as she delineates this battle in every one of her books—makes her island a fiery star on the maps of the indian ocean.
February 16, 2024
Un romanzo a cui calza perfettamente il vecchio adagio "breve ma intenso": infatti è un libro crudo, in cui la brutalità e lo squallore sono talmente assoluti da creare un senso di straniamento nel lettore, se ne resta travolti più che traumatizzati.
E' uno spaccato di vita raccontato a quattro voci, le voci di quattro adolescenti molto diversi fra loro ma accomunati dall'essere nati nel posto sbagliato: un quartiere degradato che li ingloba nella sua miseria e li rende sconfitti in partenza. La cosa che veramente turba durante la lettura non sono i tanti episodi di violenza (che pure non sono facili da mandar giù), ma il fatto che questi ragazzi siano già disillusi a 17 anni, giovani nelle passioni ma vecchi nell'anima: un conflitto interiore che li lacera e che ciascuno cerca di risolvere a modo proprio.
Le vicende raccontate si svolgono nei sobborghi di Port Louis ma sono universali, perché le periferie di disadattati sono uguali dappertutto; anche la trama inizialmente può sembrare sopra le righe ma riflettendoci è solo lo specchio deformato di una realtà malata e abbandonata dalla cosiddetta società "civile".
Avrei valutato molto più positivamente questo libro se non fosse per il grosso problema della scrittura, che spesso si dimentica di essere a servizio della trama e diventa troppo protagonista: ne risulta una prosa artefatta, che non colpisce in profondità perché è solo un esercizio di stile fine a se stesso.
Al netto di questo difetto è comunque un romanzo interessante, che si legge con facilità anche per via delle dimensioni ridotte ma che fa riflettere e ogni tanto (quando l'autrice si lascia andare al puro piacere del raccontare senza lanciarsi in voli pindarici) fa anche emozionare.
E' uno spaccato di vita raccontato a quattro voci, le voci di quattro adolescenti molto diversi fra loro ma accomunati dall'essere nati nel posto sbagliato: un quartiere degradato che li ingloba nella sua miseria e li rende sconfitti in partenza. La cosa che veramente turba durante la lettura non sono i tanti episodi di violenza (che pure non sono facili da mandar giù), ma il fatto che questi ragazzi siano già disillusi a 17 anni, giovani nelle passioni ma vecchi nell'anima: un conflitto interiore che li lacera e che ciascuno cerca di risolvere a modo proprio.
Le vicende raccontate si svolgono nei sobborghi di Port Louis ma sono universali, perché le periferie di disadattati sono uguali dappertutto; anche la trama inizialmente può sembrare sopra le righe ma riflettendoci è solo lo specchio deformato di una realtà malata e abbandonata dalla cosiddetta società "civile".
Avrei valutato molto più positivamente questo libro se non fosse per il grosso problema della scrittura, che spesso si dimentica di essere a servizio della trama e diventa troppo protagonista: ne risulta una prosa artefatta, che non colpisce in profondità perché è solo un esercizio di stile fine a se stesso.
Al netto di questo difetto è comunque un romanzo interessante, che si legge con facilità anche per via delle dimensioni ridotte ma che fa riflettere e ogni tanto (quando l'autrice si lascia andare al puro piacere del raccontare senza lanciarsi in voli pindarici) fa anche emozionare.
January 29, 2019
So I'm trying to read more translated fiction this year, and this is the first book I had recommended to me. It's a series of four interweaving monologues from four young people on the island of Mauritius as they come to adulthood. Their lives, in sharp contrast to the luxury of Mauritius the west is more often exposed to, are marked by extreme violence, and a cheapening of the human life.
The problem, is that every one of these monologues sounded the same. They all blurred into one, which seems unlikely to have been intentional given how different the narrators are from each other. It's heavily metaphorical but to a fault, removing you from any emotional investment. And I also really struggle to read books with almost no dialogue. But when it gets out of its own way, it is beautifully written and is best served by reading it in one/two sittings, or all the threads come undone.
The problem, is that every one of these monologues sounded the same. They all blurred into one, which seems unlikely to have been intentional given how different the narrators are from each other. It's heavily metaphorical but to a fault, removing you from any emotional investment. And I also really struggle to read books with almost no dialogue. But when it gets out of its own way, it is beautifully written and is best served by reading it in one/two sittings, or all the threads come undone.
January 3, 2024
Questo libro è brutale. Non è un pugno nello stomaco, ma una coltellata. Devastante, inquietante, terribile.
Il romanzo è ambientato a Troumaron, quartiere poverissimo di Port Louis, Mauritius. I protagonisti sono quattro ragazzi, ma in particolare Eva (perché italianizzare i nomi?), che vive fra le rovine della sua vita, un'adolescenza distrutta dalla sua abitudine di concedersi a chiunque la voglia. Perché lo fa? Il romanzo ce lo spiega con precisione chirurgica, attraverso le quattro voci di Eva, Savita, Sadiq detto Sad e Clélio.
Eva, tra le sue rovine. Savita, la sua amata. Sad, che ama Eva senza esserne ricambiato e adora Rimbaud. Clélio, il più disagiato fra tutti i ragazzi della banda.
È un libro così breve che si legge in un paio d'ore, ma credo che richieda almeno dieci volte tanto tempo per digerirlo. Ammesso che non sia lui a digerire me.
Il romanzo è ambientato a Troumaron, quartiere poverissimo di Port Louis, Mauritius. I protagonisti sono quattro ragazzi, ma in particolare Eva (perché italianizzare i nomi?), che vive fra le rovine della sua vita, un'adolescenza distrutta dalla sua abitudine di concedersi a chiunque la voglia. Perché lo fa? Il romanzo ce lo spiega con precisione chirurgica, attraverso le quattro voci di Eva, Savita, Sadiq detto Sad e Clélio.
Eva, tra le sue rovine. Savita, la sua amata. Sad, che ama Eva senza esserne ricambiato e adora Rimbaud. Clélio, il più disagiato fra tutti i ragazzi della banda.
È un libro così breve che si legge in un paio d'ore, ma credo che richieda almeno dieci volte tanto tempo per digerirlo. Ammesso che non sia lui a digerire me.
August 8, 2017
Anybody can write poetic prose, it's really not that difficult. The trick is to make it meaningful, to resonate, to illuminate. This for me is where the book fails. The poetic prose seems only to serve an aesthetic purpose. The novel comprises four 17 year-old narrators, each from the slums of Port Louis, Mauritius. Each narrative is poetic, at times oblique, and indistinct from one another. The characters are hardly more than cardboard cut-outs of the cliched disenfranchised youths of troubled upbringings, hardly relevant other than to be a vehicle for beautiful poetic prose. The plot is rather predictable, and lacked any shock value because of that. Oh and there is heavy rain right on queue, just when the aesthetics call for it.
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