Riambel - Priya Hein

nFifteen-year-old Noemi has no choice but to leave school and work in the house of the wealthy De Grandbourg family. n Just across the road from the slums where she grew up, she encounters a world that is starkly different from her own - yet one which would have been all too familiar to her ancestors. Bewitched by a pair of green eyes and haunted by echoes, her life begins to mirror those of girls who have gone before her.

n n Within Noemi's lament is also the herstory of Mauritius; the story of women who have resisted arrest, of teachers who care for their poorest pupils and encourage them to challenge traditional narratives, of a flawed Paradise undergoing slow but unstoppable change. n n In Riambel, Priya Hein invites us to protest, to rail against longstanding structures of class and ethnicity. She shows us a world of natural enchantment contrasted with violence and the abuse of power.

This seemingly simple tale of servitude, seduction and abandonment blisters with a fierce sense of injustice.n