Novel
My Name Is Sita
Sarnami, hai
Bea Vianen · 1969
Synopsis
In Suriname, Sita, a young Hindustani girl, celebrates her sixteenth birthday a year after her mother's death. Her father, often absent, is attached to Rukminia, with whom her little brother Ata lives. Sita seeks to know her family's past and dreams of building a life of her own, in a society divided by origin and religion. An affair with Islam, a young man who does not understand her desire for emancipation, leaves her pregnant against her will.
Context
The novel appeared in 1969 in Amsterdam from Querido, four years after a collection of poems, Cautal; it is regarded as the first novel by a Surinamese woman published by a Dutch publisher, and it is for the most part autobiographical. It is among the books most read in Surinamese secondary education, and Jos de Roo studied as early as 1974 its construction, in which linear time mingles with cyclical time. The publisher Cossee reissued it in 2021, in a version revised by the author's daughter, Kunti Elstak; an English translation appeared in 2024.
Who it is for
For discovering the coming-of-age novel of a young Hindustani girl of Suriname, translated into English but not into French.
Prizes and reception
Kees Fens hailed this first novel in de Volkskrant, while finding its descriptions of exotic nature poorly linked to the narrative.
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