Riambel by Priya Hein

Riambel by Priya Hein

Mauritian fiction

Source – Personal copy

The times now I buy a new book that isn’t translated because I have heard about it on social media is slim really. But this book I saw mentioned on Youtube, and after I got it, a few other people mentioned it, I love a slow word-of-mouth book, and this is what I think it is from Indigo Press, a new name to me. Apart from the word of mouth when I saw on the cover, it had a blurb from LE Clézio and her fellow Mauritian writer Anada Devi a writer whose book I loved when I read it because, like this book, it seemed to capture a significant slice of this tropical island but not the lovely beaches from those on the edge of the beauty getting by. Priya Hein had written a number of children’s books and short stories before this her debut novel. She has also won a number of awards, and she now splits her time between Mauritius and Germany.

We live in a cite,or Kon krool( which is how we like to refer to our shanty town). It’s also known as Africa Town – a slum where the poor and the undesirables are dumped together in hastily constructed barracks. Like tins of sardines placed next to each other in a higgledy-piggledy way. Whatever’s found in the trash somehow ends up in our cité, which is nothing but the waste of Riambel discarded in a heap that slowly rots away. A trash-strewn ghetto where everything is starving and fighting to survive – even the dogs.

Her home a shanty called Riambel everything is hard there.

The book is formed around the story of a young girl. She has to finish her school life and join other family members in the big house of The De Grandbourg family. They live in the Riambel, the slum of the city. Noemi is faced with no choice around this change. Still, we see the world through her eyes, those rich people on the other side of the road in the world, but it also mixes the history of the island but with a female twist to that and also has a beautiful idea of using recipes local to the island as well those sort of recipes passed on mother to daughter even the way they were written I had a sense of a card box like my mum had with those precious recipes passed down through the years. But as you read them, there is a sense of how the Western world has crept in on these island recipes over the years as they have been rewritten or verbally passed on. The book is also intersected with poetry from the island that evokes the spirit of the island and its struggles. As we see a young girl wrestling with a life of servitude and recounting how little can change, there is a glimpse of hope. A woman that came on a holiday and stayed seems interested in her. This shows the tension simmering under the island, an island with affluent ex french families still owning land and running things.

Make sure that your prawns are fresh by checking they colour. They should look transparent and smell of the sea Give them a quick rinse in cold water. Pull off their head, tails and legs before removing the shells and the black veins, Once this is done, rinse the prawns again under cold water.Using a ros kari or a stone mortar, crush some garlic cloves together with a small finger of fresh ginger. Pour a little oil in a pan and fry the paste over a medium fire. Add one chopped onion and continue to fry until golden. Throw in your prawns and cook for a couple of minutes. Add one or two chopped tomatoes and one sliced chilli and stir.Throw in some masala and a few curry leaves. Don’t make it too spicy for the whites, otherwise they’ll complain about their delicate stomachs. Stir well until it thickens. Add a little sea salt, but not too much, as the prawns are already salty. Pour in a dash of water if needed. Sprinkle with fresh coriander and serve with pickled vegtables – enn ti zasar legin – and freshly cooked rice

one of the recipes her for a prawn curry I liked the sound of this one.

I think I am amazed by the book as it is a debut novel. It is so well crafted. I love the ways she weaves Noemi’s voice, the island’s poets, and the island’s recipes. It is a personal history of an island, whereas Noemi says the history they learn isn’t there’s. It has the simmering below the surface of a Mauritius, something you felt in Devi’s novel, a sense of a powder keg that never entirely blows. A sense of things not changing. This is an island out of time with other places. Slavery is gone but only in name, and this shows how little hope there is in a slum-like Riambel, no matter how Noemi sees it as having a double meaning. And it is really Rive en belle Beautiful Shore (I love this thought. It captures her as a girl of a certain age). I also loved the usage of the recipes as a way of talking about the island with food as a way of showing changing tastes and how Western ideas drifted in. I hope this has been seen by someone near the Booker. It reminds me of the gems you used to find years ago on the Booker lists. Have you read this book?

Winstons score – ++++++A best book of the year so far !!