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Blue Bay Palace
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Exposing the extremes of life in a developing country, this compelling novel of doomed love shows how poverty, class divisions, and ramshackle housing become even harder to bear when luxurious resorts and rich tourists arrive on the scene. Growing up on the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, lonely young Maya hopes that someday she might escape her poverty and find
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ILLUSIONE
Con questa novella di novanta pagine mi si è presentata Appanah per la prima volta.
Non la sua prima però, trattandosi del secondo romanzo, ma la prima per me lettore.
Che sono andato avanti leggendo man mano quanto veniva tradotto in italiano: il successivo Le nozze di Anna e poi il suo vero esordio Le rocce di Poudre d’Or.
Appanah è andata avanti a scrivere, risultano altri sette titoli, ma le traduzioni in italiano si sono fermate lì, ai primi tre titoli. Che mi sono piaciuti tutti e ...more
Con questa novella di novanta pagine mi si è presentata Appanah per la prima volta.
Non la sua prima però, trattandosi del secondo romanzo, ma la prima per me lettore.
Che sono andato avanti leggendo man mano quanto veniva tradotto in italiano: il successivo Le nozze di Anna e poi il suo vero esordio Le rocce di Poudre d’Or.
Appanah è andata avanti a scrivere, risultano altri sette titoli, ma le traduzioni in italiano si sono fermate lì, ai primi tre titoli. Che mi sono piaciuti tutti e ...more
Lettura decisamente scarsina. La materia poteva anche essere interessante, ma nessuno dei temi trattati viene adeguatamente sviluppato: né la differenza tra caste, né l’inganno, né la conseguente depressione della protagonista, che sfocia alla fine in un atto violento. Un racconto lungo che finisce per non dire assolutamente niente, benché sembri, a livello formale, volerlo fare, perché i personaggi rimangono del tutto sfuggenti e carenti da punto di vista psicologico.
Given my appreciation for Nathacha Appanah’s debut work, “Les Rochers de poudre d’or”, I was anxious to give her other books a try. “Blue Bay Palace” is Appanah’s second book. The story is a lot simpler and more conventional than “Les Rochers…”, or even Appanah’s latest work, “Tropique de la violence”.
“Blue Bay Palace” is simply a love story gone horribly wrong. Maya, a low-caste slum dweller on the island of Mauritius, falls head over heels in love with Dave, a high-caste plantation owner’s son ...more
“Blue Bay Palace” is simply a love story gone horribly wrong. Maya, a low-caste slum dweller on the island of Mauritius, falls head over heels in love with Dave, a high-caste plantation owner’s son ...more
Looking over some of my old posts about books, I've noticed a tendency to bend over backwards to find nice things to say in an attempt to seem fair-minded, to the point that I re-read the reviews and think they are a bit misleading. So I decided to be a bit harsher when necessary. This is one of those times.
I had problems with the prose style from the first page; it's trying too hard for a certain kind of literary gravitas that it can't manage, and as a result it is badly overwritten. In fact th ...more
I had problems with the prose style from the first page; it's trying too hard for a certain kind of literary gravitas that it can't manage, and as a result it is badly overwritten. In fact th ...more
Read for a Francophone Lit class. Was ok compared to some of our other reading, and found it interesting how much American pop culture played a role in it.
Belonging to the long-standing Indian community in that country, Appanah has written a little novella in French of jealousy and murder which is supported mainly by the exoticism of its locale. After all, were a writer to describe the affair of a low-caste woman with a high-caste man in India, people would merely shrug and say, 'Ho hum.' There's little new in this tale for a subcontinental reader, and possibly even for a watcher of Indian films - it's a cliche. The narrator, Maya, meets her dashi
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I read this in 2011. I felt like it did not reflect Mauritian life. The tone of the narration was morose. Not badly written, but morose. The ending bothered me a lot. But maybe madness isn't meant to be understood.
I'll try her other works soon. I won't judge her talents by one novel only :) ...more
I'll try her other works soon. I won't judge her talents by one novel only :) ...more
Short story of love and obsession set in Mauritius. Only character I really related to was the gardener.
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See also: Nathacha Appanah-Mouriquand
Nathacha Devi Pathareddy Appanah is a Mauritian-French author. She comes from a traditional Indian family.
She spent most of her teenage years in Mauritius and also worked as a journalist/columnist at Le Mauricien and Week-End Scope before emigrating to France.
Since 1998, Nathacha Appanah is well-known as an active writer. Her first book Les Rochers de Poudre d' ...more
Nathacha Devi Pathareddy Appanah is a Mauritian-French author. She comes from a traditional Indian family.
She spent most of her teenage years in Mauritius and also worked as a journalist/columnist at Le Mauricien and Week-End Scope before emigrating to France.
Since 1998, Nathacha Appanah is well-known as an active writer. Her first book Les Rochers de Poudre d' ...more
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