‘Les années de braise’ reconsidered: literary representations of Mauritian independence, fifty years on

On 12 March 1968, Mauritius celebrated independence from Great Britain. This article explores how the independence period is represented, fifty years later, in a selection of recent Mauritian novels. Focusing upon long-silenced inter-ethnic tensions, inequalities and exclusions, these twenty-first-century fictional works deconstruct dominant celebratory narratives of Mauritius’s multicultural ‘rainbow nation.’ By retrospectively revealing cracks in the nation’s harmonious façade, the article argues, the novels’ counter-discursive narratives of the nation’s foundation play an important part in an ongoing, forward-looking project of nation-building that envisages more inclusive, non-ethnic forms of ‘unity in diversity.