Geoffrey Strachan, whose career as a translator has garnered as many prizes as Appanah has for writing, delicately relays a choir diverse enough never to meet shoulders under the roof of one language. That escape, with France as the final slumlord, is a fantasy. Embroiled in the ongoing scrum for significance in gang-ruled “Gaza,” Moïse tries to pry himself out. His life, though, more closely resembles a curse. Wanting a child and left by her husband, Marie finds the miracle of Moïse beached on Mayotte’s shore. The story turns around the arrival of an orphan named Moïse-the French rendering of Moses-by his adoptive mother and nurse, Marie. Appanah’s prose is filled with Morrison-esque lyricism, multi-generational narrative, and cutting tragedy.
Tropic of Violence unfolds on Mayotte-a French overseas territory between Madagascar and Mozambique-evoking the island’s dueling mix of precariousness and invitation.
In her third novel to appear in English, Mauritian-French author Nathacha Appanah has written a dazzling glass mosaic reflecting still-colonial France whose shards are edged with blood. TROPIC OF VIOLENCE BY Nathacha Appanah, translated by Geoffrey Strachan
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