{"id":17353,"date":"2021-04-28T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-28T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/?p=17353"},"modified":"2021-04-13T16:28:48","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T14:28:48","slug":"tropic-of-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/2021\/04\/28\/tropic-of-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Tropic of Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Attempts to flee to Europe don\u2019t only happen via the Mediterranean Sea, but also in the Indian Ocean. There – north of Madagascar – lies the island of Mayotte, an overseas territory of France. The Mauritian-French writer and journalist Nathacha Appanah lived on Mayotte for several years and occupied herself particularly with the fates of boys. This is precisely the subject of her latest novel, Tropic of Violence<\/em>, translated from the French into English by Geoffrey Strachan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Appanah’s story begins when Marie, a white<\/em> French nurse living on Mayotte, takes in the baby of a woman who has fled the Comoro Islands. The young mother believes her baby, with one green eye and one black eye, is cursed. Marie calls this Iris heterochromia<\/em> and is overjoyed to have a child. The boy she calls Mo\u00efse grows up and his life with Marie is actually comfortable: he has French papers, goes to a good school \u2013 but internally, the question of his identity, the loss of his biological mother, and being raised by a white<\/em> woman, trigger anger in him. When Mo\u00efse is 14 years old, his life is completely turned upside down. He now gets to know a completely different side of Mayotte and is literally at the mercy of Bruce and the gang of boys he leads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From continuously changing perspectives, Marie, Mo\u00efse, Bruce, and later the policeman Olivier and the social worker St\u00e9phane, tell of Mo\u00efse’s fate and that of many other boys on the island. The novel reads like a collection of personal accounts and conveys an absolutely brutal and hopeless reality of life for young people on Mayotte who are left to fend for themselves. In the shanty town called Gaza, Bruce organizes the children and teenagers; together they keep themselves alive by begging and stealing. Bruce styles himself as the boss of Gaza and uses violence to get his way. Feeling power over others, humiliating them, gives him almost as much of a high as his drug habit. For both Mo\u00efse and Bruce, their coming together will be their undoing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Appanah’s novel is utterly enriching, as it brings a little-noticed part of France into focus. Overall, showing brutal vulnerability is central to this – so brace yourself! Within this, the passages about Mo\u00efse’s inner conflicts and local worldviews were particularly appealing to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Attempts to flee to Europe don\u2019t only happen via the Mediterranean Sea, but also in the Indian Ocean. There lies the island of Mayotte, an overseas territory of France. Nathacha Appanah’s new book explores flight and the fate of boys on Mayotte.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17354,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[678,677,676,670,674,667,468,666,679,675,524,673],"class_list":["post-17353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-boys","tag-comoro-islands","tag-france","tag-gangs","tag-graywolf-press","tag-mayotte","tag-migration","tag-nathacha-appanah","tag-shanty-town","tag-translated-literature","tag-translation","tag-tropic-of-violence"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17353"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17360,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17353\/revisions\/17360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}