‘Les années de braise’Footnote¹

1 This phrase, roughly translated as ‘the smouldering years’ is from Sewtohul's novel, Made in Mauritius (Citation2012, 197), and is frequently used to describe the tense, highly-charged atmosphere of the independence period, when a resurgence of inter-ethnic violence was a constant threat. The idiomatic phrase encompasses connotations of latent heat (braise, embers) and of tension (on tenterhooks, walking on eggshells). All translations in this article are my own.

reconsidered: literary representations of Mauritian independence, fifty years on