James F's Reviews > Ève de ses décombres

The fourth novel I have read by Mauritien Neustadt prize winner Ananda Devi, I began this at the beginning of the month but then put it aside when I realized that it was largely influenced by the poetry of Rimbaud, which I hadn't yet read. I then read Rimbaud's complete poetry, a biography of Rimbaud, a critical book on Rimbaud and the Paris Commune, and a collection of poems about the Commune before returning to this novel yesterday. (It is a short book and a very fast read.) Not only is one of the major characters influenced by Rimbaud, whose poetry he quotes throughout the book, but the entire writing style of the novel is reminiscent of Rimbaud as well, and there are verbal echoes throughout.

The novel is set in Troumaron, an impoverished quarter of the Mauritien city of Port Louis, inhabited mainly by unemployed factory workers since the closing of the major factory. Written in a post-modernist style, the novel is divided into short segments in the first person representing the thoughts of the four major characters, all in their mid-to-late teens: Ève, the main protagonist, who engages in prostitution, Sad (Sadiq) who is in love with her, and is the character who identifies himself with Rimbaud, Savita, Ève's best friend and lesbian lover, and Clélio, who is a friend of Sad and is given to violence, and has spent time in prison for various juvenile offenses. Sad and Clélio belong to a "band" or gang which dominates the area. There are also short passages in the second person addressing Ève which give information about her which would not be part of her own thoughts. A fifth important character, who is not given his own segments, is an unnamed professor who has an affair with Ève.

The first half of the book is basically background; the second half begins with the discovery of a crime and describes its aftermath for all the characters in the latently explosive situation of Troumaron.

This is the best of the four novels I have read by Devi, and probably her most famous book. (It is also available in English translation.)