Abstract/Summary

In the conclusion, I reflect that a common concern with the problem of belonging unites all of the novels of my corpus. Despite the great diversity of forms of belonging imagined, there also emerge areas of striking convergence: the trope of the journey of discovery; moments of rapturous connection with the island’s natural beauty; the haunting figure of the stateless migrant; and a desire to connect with Creole characters and hence with a long-suppressed, locally-rooted ‘Creole’ culture that endures in the interstices of Mauritius’s dominant, diasporic ‘community system’. When combined with the novels’ common resistance to prescriptive identitarian models, these convergences betray a potentially unifying, future-orientated commitment to common values, to the ongoing project of Mauritian nationhood and to the tantalising fiction of belonging.