A Portrait of an Island on Fire: an interview with Ariel Saramandi
On Mauritius, writing under a pseudonym and living on the front line of climate change.
When reading Portrait, I expected to learn about the issues that affect Mauritius - and I did, but what struck me was how none of the issues are singular - they are global issues. The increasingly unpredictable climate, women's reproductive rights, migration and the rise of extremist right wing politics are problems all societies are grappling with. It is an eye-opening and urgent collection, born out of a deep care for social justice and a desire to create a record. While Saramandi is pushing for a better Mauritius, she is also pushing for a better world.
Below is an edited version of our conversation that took place via email. I loved every moment of reading this book and I loved getting to chat to Ariel about it. It goes without saying, but I recommend this collection enormously and I think many of you will be interested in Ariel and her perspective.
Enjoy!
(This interview was conducted at the end of May, a few weeks before Portrait was published in the UK, on the 19th June. You can order a copy here.)
Ariel, congratulations on Portrait of an Island on Fire! I can’t wait to chat to you about one of the most informative and profound essay collections I have read in years.
I consider it necessary to begin this conversation by recognising your bravery in writing these essays. After the virality of ‘An Education’, you acknowledge that it was ‘the first time in recent memory that someone had written about Franco-Mauritian racism so extensively - and in the first person’. You write under a pseudonym and it has given you some protection from online harassment. However, in Mauritius, you suggest there is ‘no privacy’, and some believe you are ‘mentally ill’ and ‘cruel beyond reckoning’ for writing about Mauritian society.
After talking about the 2020 MV Wakashio oil spill, your family feared you’d been ‘put on some sort of list’ and you recall what your life looked like after criticising the Mauritian government on international news;
‘I lock the door to my home when I’m inside. I wait for the police to show up, declare that I’ve been charged with an annoyance, hurting my country's reputation. I sleep even less. I leave my British passport on Antonine’s bedside table, along with a list of journalists and lawyers to contact if I’m ever arrested. I keep a box of formula in the pantry, so that if I’m taken away at least there's milk for our son’.
It is unsettling to read. How are you feeling about Portrait’s imminent release into the world?
Honestly, it doesn’t feel real. I live very quietly here, and I don’t think anyone on the school run knows I write or about my pseudonym, so there’s a big schism between my identity as a writer and my everyday person. At this point it seems that me and my work only exists online - in the pdf of the book on my laptop, in my social media presence. And once I put the laptop and phone down, once I am fully immersed in childcare, it feels almost baffling that I am going to be in the UK in three weeks. We’re fighting a two-week household battle with norovirus here at the moment, and in between cleaning up all the vomit it occurs to me that I haven’t replied to this or that email about events or proofs. It’s like that surreal moment of pause during the day.
And for those people here who do know who I am and the kind of trouble I’ve stirred up over the years, especially those in power — I guess I’m just happy that the government changed in our general elections in 2024. If the previous party in power had won I’d have taken more concrete steps towards emigration. I know many other people were thinking of doing the same.
But even though the political situation has changed I still don’t want to draw attention to myself, so there’s no public launch event planned here, or book signing - I doubt Mauritian bookshops will even stock it, to be honest.
The duty of being a mum always comes first! It's interesting to hear how Portrait feels like it only exists online and not in your 'real' life. I guess in also offering protection, a pseudonym also creates distance between you and your writing.
Immediately you've mentioned emigration, one of the predominant themes in Portrait. The collection opens; ‘I’d seen my future as a straight line to progress, to getting out of here. A line that turned out to be a loop’. Throughout you give the impression that you were brought up to believe the future was elsewhere. There is recognition of the privilege in being able to leave, and perhaps a misfortune of having to stay.
After having such determination to leave Mauritius, how did returning lead you to writing? What did the essays look like back then, and why did you start writing them?
Like many Mauritians, my parents had clearly told me that my chances of having a good, rewarding career lay abroad. Also, like many Mauritian parents, their spectrum of careers that they'd chosen for me was very defined: doctor-lawyer-engineer-finance. So their plan was for me to excel in one of those fields, earn a lot of money and marry rich. I did none of those things, but the societal pressure to conform was immense. It took a lot to break away from all of that.
What made me want to emigrate from Mauritius initially, in fact, was to get as far away from the Mauritian society I'd grown up in as possible; leave its surveillance and its abuse behind, and root myself into the one place where I felt more or less safe and where I flourished: university. I finished my Master's degree around the same month the Brexit vote was called. My partner's emigration to the UK felt less and less like a definite possibility. My relationship with him – the one constant in my life – was not something I wanted to put on hold and I was sick of long distance. And so I returned.
When I came back I started reading James Baldwin seriously. Stranger in the Village made me want to write essays. After Baldwin I made my way through Toni Morrison's essays, and she was hugely influential too: I wanted that kind of intellectual rigour in my work. I wrote to make sense of the country I was from, that I had lived in pretty much all my life. So from the beginning, my essays were a mixture of historical investigation, memoir, and societal analysis.
A lot of the subjects I became interested in had to do with my mother. She had a difficult life – the little I know of it – and her relationship to the past is one of secrecy. She believes that the majority of 'the past' – her childhood, her parents, grand-parents and so forth – should be cordoned off and forgotten about, that what is dead should stay dead, and that with death comes peace. And so here I am, knocking on tombs, as it were, sometimes literally. I think that, in the end, I just wrote to understand her better.
I love that you acknowledge becoming a more serious reader drove you to want to write the essays. I think Baldwin and Morrison's writing has that effect on most of us - awakening a desire to write something that can make that much of an impact. And 'knocking on tombs' - I love that phrase!
You are a translator and speak multiple languages. In ‘All My Languages’ you explore the politicisation of language and the ‘intricate ways in which language is linked to ethnicity in Mauritius’. You say you think and dream in French and that ‘if choosing a language [...] was primarily a matter of exposure [...] then I would have chosen French. Or at the very least, I would have also written in French’.
I am curious to know why you choose to write Portrait in English? Have these essays always existed in English, or was there ever a consideration to write it in French or perhaps Kreol?
Ha! These essays have always existed in English. I tried a draft of a piece in French seven years ago and it read so badly I gave up. I would love to write in Kreol, but I'm still clumsy when it comes to writing anything longer than 500 words.
What is interesting, though, is that my English may be more 'broken' now. The last thing I wrote for the book was a timeline of events. I realised, after the first round of proofreading, that I'd shaped the sentences and conjugated the tenses as if I were writing it in French. So I do wonder what's going to happen to my writing in the future, linguistically-speaking.
There is often an assumption that if you can speak a language, you can write in it too, but that is not always the case. I wondered how much the 'audience' for this collection influenced the language you chose to write in - but you give the impression it was destined to be English.
You allude in your previous answer how your essays are such a mixture of style and form - you have a remarkable ability to write stylistically unique essays that intertwine the personal and the political. A personal favourite was ‘Getting Rid Of It’ - I thought the harmony you created on the page between the politicisation of abortion, medical misogyny, excerpts from literature and your own experiences with hyperemesis gravidarum were profoundly moving. The emotion within that essay brought me to tears, especially the ending.
I’d love to hear more about the form of these essays and how you found this style to be most effective? How did you manage to create a balance between being a journalist, personal essayist, social researcher and preserver of history?
First, thank you so, so much for this question!
So writing essays in this style was quite difficult in the beginning. I wanted the form to be a vessel, one that could fit a lot of dense material – especially historical material – and still keep its shape. It took many, many drafts and rejections before that could happen, and even then there's no such thing as a formula – if anything, I just have a better sensitivity as to the flow of narrative on the page.
For example, The Inheritors didn't initially have that imagined historical idea of what had happened to the Tancrel family; instead there was an interview with a historian, a discussion of the historical possibilities. I think one editor read the piece and said something like there was just too much going on in the essay, and I remember thinking that I couldn't sacrifice the knowledge that I'd gained from the interview, but I could present it in a different way. And luckily for me, it worked.
Getting Rid of It was quicker, funnily enough – it only took maybe two-three drafts – because the weight of what was happening to me basically conjured the form the essay took, especially towards the end. Urgency does that sometimes.
Urgency is a powerful thing. It is admirable how you managed to make each essay contain so much, yet they never felt weighted by material.
This collection was my first encounter with the social and political landscape of Mauritius and, I would assume, it might be the case for other readers too. How does it make you feel that your voice might be the first Mauritian perspective they encounter? That there will be readers who learn about Mauritius through snippets of your life?
Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel. But I am happier with the idea that they will see my home through my eyes, than in the eyes of a travel journalist. I’ve read some seriously hideous pieces – ‘articles’ that would otherwise be unpublishable if they weren’t in the travel section. They exoticise, they demean, they are racist. There are two broad kinds: the first type of article is concerned with measuring our country’s resorts and ‘island experience’. The author details how luxurious their stay was, how relaxing, etc, and Mauritians make an appearance in these pieces as good, smiling, subservient attendants. The second type of article is worse: the author presents themselves as sophisticated, and declares Mauritius boring, says our people are unremarkable if not backwards, our island propitious to a kind of lazy indolence.
It is devastating how impressions of certain countries, particularly tropical islands, are predominantly formed through travel journalism. It reinforces the idea that they are just holiday destinations. Unfortunately, it was the only exposure I had had of Mauritius before this collection.
What struck me the most in Portrait was your discussion of the damage does tourism on the island; the limitless water tourists get in their hotels (when islanders have limited hours of water in summer), the suncream they leave in the water, the hotels manicured efforts to hide the beach erosion and lagoons full of dead coral. How important was it that you disrupt the idyllic image of Mauritius and detail the horrors that tourists are contributing to?
I wrote those essays for myself first, to better understand my island, make sense of my thoughts, learn more history, and perhaps most importantly: to remember the last couple of years, because they were momentous. Then I showed the essays to my Mauritian friends, explored subjects with them. That the essays became a collection, and to be published by Fitzcarraldo, feels completely unreal. If I was thinking primarily – or even peripherally – of the non-Mauritian reader I would have written an entirely different book. I don’t live in a ‘touristy’ area, and I don’t think about tourists that much except when I see the damaging effects of the industry first-hand. But maybe I should have thought more about tourism; I’d like to write an essay exploring the mental health of workers in the hospitality industry, for instance.
I would love to read that essay. You briefly mention the mental health of those in the hospitality industry in ‘Pandemic In Nine Acts’ and those snippets were distressing.
What do you think the future of tourism should look like in Mauritius, if there should be one at all?
It should be as sustainable as possible. The amount of hotels in our country should be limited, cut down even, the beaches rewilded and made properly public again. Transport methods to our island should be greener, but then again these are conversations that involve rigorously thinking about the future of travel, capitalism and climate change. A British tourist on a two-week holiday won’t be able to take a solar powered boat to visit my island, for instance.
Agreed. When it comes to tourism, the responsibility is not solely on Mauritius - it needs to become a more global discussion about how we move through the world (literally) with more care; a redefining of what tourism is. This conversation about collective responsibility, how interconnected our global society is, runs throughout the collection. While primarily about Mauritius, the island doesn’t exist in isolation, it details the problems we face as a global society.
I was very affected by the horrific first hand accounts of climate change in ‘Snapshots of an Island on the Front Line’. Mauritius has such a volatile climate, something that is unimaginable to many in the West - and ‘unimaginable’ is a profoundly unfair word to use, because it is your reality.
What is it like to live on the front line the climate crisis, when climate policies are being consistently de-prioritised by Western governments?
Ha! Well. I saw a post on Instagram today, that said people – in North America, presumably – should pay attention to the genocide in Gaza because the weapons used on Palestinians will then be used on Americans in the future. While I agree with that statement, I was also irritated: again, it’s a call for Americans to pay attention to the murder of non-white humans, because they could be murdered in the same way too; that they should protest the genocide because the genocide presents a risk to themselves. It feels self-serving to me, narcissistic. I am disappointed, but not surprised, at the (still tawdry) number of public figures who have stood up for Palestinians and called the ‘war’ a genocide since 2023. More are coming forward now, but this feels like something absolutely everyone with a conscience and access to social media should be talking about.
And so, to come to the climate crisis: if people have responded with indifference to the constant footage of dead, mutilated, orphaned babies and children over the past two years, they will continue responding with indifference to the hundreds of thousands – millions, possibly – of people who have, and will, die from climate change-induced disasters. People in the so-called Global South have been suffering – and dying – from flooding, drought, food scarcity, pestilence and mosquito-borne diseases directly tied to global heating for over two decades now, but as long as the most terrible disasters stay in ‘our’ regions, it will be difficult to get people to act.
Before I thought that all we can do, here, is band together as a nation, find solutions that’ll help mitigate the worse effects of climate change. Now, in a year where mosquito-borne diseases have spread like the plague, I don’t know how much mitigation we can do, honestly. But we have to try. For instance, I don’t want to believe that efforts to repopulate our coral reefs are a waste of time, given the state of the world, but I want us to keep trying.
The continual indifference from many about the genocide in Gaza is sickening. You are right - if that doesn’t incite rage, neither will footage of climate disasters. I think many used to believe that once people could see something for themselves, it would change the way they think. But more than ever, it feels increasingly unlikely that witnessing these horrors changes attitudes. We do have to keep trying, because it is all that we have left.
Do you recall one of the first times you realised that Mauritius’s climate was changing in front of your eyes?
It used to feel more like an accumulation of things: people complaining that it was getting hotter every year, that the rainfall couldn’t be depended on anymore, the refrain that ‘things have changed’. I remember the island-wide flooding in March 2008; I was at school, I remember the level of the water rising, the panic that set in. I remember noting the incredible change in the landscape of Tamarin; when I was a child the area was dry, barely any rainfall, La Tourelle a distinctly purple rock of a mountain. And now – since around 2015, maybe earlier – the mountain is all plushly covered with trees, and Tamarin gets flooded at least once a year.
And with every year there’s a new magnitude to the change, there’s nothing subtle anymore. Our summer rains, which should have arrived in November 2024, arrived in late April, if I’m not mistaken.
How frequently you mention the scarcity of water in Portrait frightened me, and my reaction exemplifies some of the narcissism you previously mentioned seen by those who aren’t in the Global South - who measure severity by its proximity. What is happening in Mauritius will happen to us. Despite calls to consider water usage and countries experiencing this issue for over two decades, there is still an opinion that water scarcity is ‘just’ a Global South issue.
The power of community is everywhere in this collection. From the citizen-led action in response to the oil spill, to the relentless campaigning last year against the previous governments increasing corruption. Portrait demonstrates that collective action can, and does, work; the community effectively cleared the oil spill without aid from the state, and the island saw a newly elected government in November 2024.
What is one of your favourite parts of the Mauritian community?
Maybe not parts but a characteristic: Mauritians are kind. Many will go out of their way to offer their help. We have our problems here – drug addiction and its attendant health risks are probably the biggest issues we have here at the moment – but there are so many organisations and people committed to finding solutions to ending these problems. Absolute indifference is rare.
It’s no surprise, for me, that the most powerful outsider figure who rose to prominence in Mauritius was known as a social worker. This idea of service to the community is a trait Mauritians respond to and respect.
Kindness is such a wonderful characteristic for a population to have.
Your final essay, ‘Ten Years in Power’ was relentless to read - I can’t imagine what it was like to expereince. I breathed a sigh of relief when the final page announced a new government. How is morale on the island six months after the election? And how are you finding your new role of being a political researcher?
Well I’ve had to take a step back from the MMM’s Sustainable Development Commission after my mother was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer last year, among other issues. So I haven’t been able to do as much research as I’d have liked to, or even keep up with the news properly.
I think the morale here is good, despite the obvious difficulties: we’re in immense debt as a nation, and getting out of it will be challenging. I’m glad to see Mauritians are not letting politicians of the new government off the hook, but I’d have liked to see a bigger turnout at the municipal elections this year – a paltry number of people voted, I think believing that representatives of the current alliance would win all the seats, which is pretty much what happened, with a few exceptions. There’s a feeling, too, that people feel confident in the new leadership and want to rest a little - take their minds off the political landscape for a while.
I am so sorry to hear about your mother. Fighting for change while dealing with personal struggles we all face (raising a family, sickness, aging parents etc) is a lot. It is a tentative position for a society to be in post election, where the people are likely to take a backseat because of the ‘win’. It is hard to keep that momentum going, but I hope the good morale continues to create more vested interest in the government.
Throughout the collection you mention several authors and books. I have made a note of them, creating a list of the other novels ‘Portrait of an Island on Fire’ is in conversation with;
Portrait of an Island on Fire Reading List:
‘The Last Brother’ by Natacha Appanah
‘Eve Out of Her Ruins’ by Ananda Devi
‘Blue Bay Palace’ by Natacha Appanah
‘On Immunity’ by Eula Biss
‘King Kong Theory’ by Virginie Despentes
‘The Uninhabitable Earth’ by David Wallace-Wells
‘Mutiny’ by Lindsey Collen
‘The Rape of Sita’ by Lindsey Collen
‘Getting Rid Of It’ by Lindsey Collen
That’s so nice of you, thank you!
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Ariel’s further Reading List:
‘Le Malaise Creole’ by Rosabelle Boswell
‘The Hidden Globe’ by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
‘In the Wake: On Blackness and Being’ by Christina Sharpe
‘Creating the Creole Island’ by Megan Vaughan
‘Women & Indenture’ by Marina Carter
‘Histoire d’une colonie’ by Evenor Hitié
‘Quand l’Hindouisme est créole’ by Mathieu Clarevoylas
‘Exils’ by Gilbert Ahnee
‘Kaya Days’ by Carl de Souza
‘DIEGO GARCIA’ by Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams
‘A L’Autre Bout de Moi’ by Marie-Therese Humbert
‘Le Marronage a l’isle de France’ by Ile Maurice and Amédée Nagapen
‘Histoire de la Colonie’ by Amédée Nagapen
‘La paroisse de Saint-Julien: Haut-de-Flacq’ by Amédée Nagapen
Thank you for reading!
Order your copy of Portrait of an Island on Fire here and subscribe to
’s newsletter ‘Song of Isles’ here.You can read some of Ariel’s essays; ‘The Inheritors’ , ‘Getting Rid of It’ , ‘An Education’ and ‘Death Takes A Lagoon’. All of her work is listed on her website.
Let me know what this interview encouraged you to think about, how it made you feel and what your perspective of Mauritius was prior to reading this?! I’d love to know.
While I am always thinking about the interconnectedness of our world, I have been thinking about it even more since reading Portrait. I know I will revisit my heavily dog-eared and annotated copy for years to come.
If you enjoyed this, why not share it with someone you’d like to impress with your impeccable taste!
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I endeavour to always introduce you to books that don’t get coverage elsewhere - that is a promise.
Martha this is excellent!! What a great interview. I don't know much about Mauritius outside of sporadic news articles, but that's why reading is so lovely — now we can get a fuller, more human picture. I'm so intrigued now and am devastated to see it's not available in the US until December 😭 I eagerly await the day!
This is a fantastic interview, Martha, and I hope to see more in the future! What a great conversation and I'm so looking forward to it coming out in the US - I can't believe I have to wait until December!