Book reading: Multiple perspectives from the Indian Ocean - Ananda Devi
Abstract
- Abstract
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In July 2022 the Cluster's department „Internationalisation and Public Engagement“ organised a book reading with renowned author Ananda Devi.
Born in 1957 in Mauritius, Ananda Devi began to be noticed at the age of 15 when she won a prize in an international short-story. She published her first collection of short-stories at the age of 19. Over the next nearly five decades, she has become one of the major literary voices of the Indian Ocean.
Published by the French publishers Gallimard and Grasset, she has won numerous literary prizes. Her writing is characterised by an inner violence and a harsh outlook on modern society, especially with regard to the status of women. Her characters are trapped by the contrary forces of society, religion, human cruelty and the seismic faults of history. Their only recourse, in their solitary quest, is their lucidity and humanity. Despite the harshness of her themes, Ananda Devi brings to her writing a poetry and sensuality that shines a light in the midst of the darkness she explores.
She has been translated in several languages and has received decorations from Mauritius, and also from France, with the title of Officier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2014 she received a major award from the Académie Française. The University of Silesia, Poland, conferred upon her a Honoris Causa doctorate.
People & roles
- speaker
- Devi, Ananda
Origins & context
- Title
- Book reading: Multiple perspectives from the Indian Ocean - Ananda Devi
- Language
- English
- YouTube playlist
- Readings, Concerts and other events
- Date
- June 9, 2023
Identifiers & sources
Full text
- Transcript
- good evening everybody here at cultural and help for reading and discussion with Ananda Devi which was made possible also by Africa multiple cluster of Excellence at the University of peroit I'm very happy and very glad that Ananda Devi came finally to bairoit we have been in contact for quite a while it was never possible because she's always invited somewhere else and she's always very busy but finally she came to byroid in spite of all the problems that we have at the moment with traveling I mean Lufthansa the airport in Frankfurt used to be something else so it was quite difficult so we are particularly happy that you really made it to byroid thank you for coming and so we are very happy tonight that we can discuss or first of all that you will read from two of your novels riordananda Devi is a busy personally writer who stands really for mauritian mauritian literature and this is also because she has published her she she has been writing from from being from I mean from a very early age um and has been publishing from from 77 to today I think 26 novels uh poems essays and so on so if you look at this Rhythm so every almost every two two three years a book and not just a novel but very a very dense books and very poetic in a very poetic language and also with very complex uh topics that she approaches so it's really a very big over um she has received quite a lot of awards and in June last June you got the title of the doctor doctor nurse causa by the University of Philadelphia okay how do you pronounce this correctly Silesia in polon um unfortunately we cannot we don't have any award tonight but we are still very happy that you're with us maybe we have to create one for this kind of uh very impressive verse so the books that we will approach tonight she's she writes in French will do it first in English um because there might also be some public who doesn't understand French and the title was also between Mauritius and India and I just brought two two books… Read the full text about 16,335 words
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