Ananda Devi returns with a saga of Mauritius, splendor and slavery
In an interview with Le Temps, the writer describes her new novel, «Chronique d'un royaume perdu», as the culmination of an œuvre built around her native island. She appears this weekend at the Livre sur les quais festival.
Ananda Devi's new novel, «Chronique d'un royaume perdu», is one of the notable titles of this rentrée littéraire 2026, according to Le Temps. The Swiss paper describes it as an adventure saga steeped in myth and magic, built around larger-than-life characters, and centered once again on Mauritius, the island Devi has made into literary territory since she began publishing in the late 1970s.
Le Temps frames the book as a love song and a cry of dread aimed at the same island: its surreal beauty on one hand, the forgotten horrors of slavery on the other. The paper calls it a work suspended between splendor and destruction, and describes it as the most ambitious novel of Devi's career to date.
Ce roman m'est venu avec la force d'une avalanche.
Ananda Devi, interviewed in Le Temps
Devi is a guest this weekend at the Livre sur les quais festival, where she will present the novel, according to Le Temps.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.
