Novel
The Wounded Sea
Satendra Nandan · 1991
Synopsis
A narrator long without a name looks back on his childhood in a Fijian village where a large Indian community lives, not far from the airport where his father was the first Indian to be hired. His memories, nourished by the Ramayana, bring back the grandfather who came to Fiji under an indenture contract, the father, a hard man, and the figures of the village: the schoolmaster Birbal, who became a pandit, old Nani and her monkey god, the disputes that the father arbitrates for a little alcohol and goat curry. A good pupil, he wins a scholarship to study in Delhi.
Context
Published in 1991 by New Endeavour Press in Australia, the novel follows in four parts the life of its narrator, from childhood in the village to public life, and the author largely transposes his own into it. Vijay Mishra, who presented it at its launch in Fremantle in March 1991, reads in it the ideology of girmit, born of the indenture of Indian workers, and a memory made of multiple voices; he praises its comic register, but faults the book for its closed world, in which the indigenous Fijians remain caricatures. It is counted among the major works of one of the country's most notable writers.
Who it is for
A memory novel in a comic register, about the Indian community of Fiji; no French translation has been noted.
Prizes and reception
The Modern Novel prefers its village stories, colourful and funny, to the pages devoted to politics.
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