Abstract/Summary

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.’