Kaya days

De Souza's electric English-language debut recounts Mauritius's 1999 Kaya riots over two days as seen through the eyes of a young girl. Teenager Santee leaves her village to pick up her younger brother Ramesh in the large town of Rose-Hill, not knowing that the singer Kaya has been jailed and found dead in his cell, or that the discovery has sparked riots in town. A case of mistaken identity leads to the owner of a gambling den trying to rape her. She gets away and into the first cab that stops. Halfway through the night, after the driver ditches Santee, she meets Ronaldo moments before a group of young men flip the cab and light it on fire. Santee's perspective is delivered in a dreamlike rush as she allows chance encounters to pull her along. In the streets, gardens, and gorges of the burning city, Santee continues her search for Ramesh. Encountering Chinese, Creole, Hindu, and Muslim Mauritians, her circuitous trek opens up the otherwise anonymous nature of the mob to find personal stories and uncover human community. De Souza's unpredictable, propulsive tale is a rip-roaring trip teeming with beauty, anger, possibility, and helplessness. (Sept.)

A much-anticipated novel in translation from a Mauritian maestro. In 1999, Kaya, a Mauritian musician and activist, performed at a public concert to advocate for the legalization of marijuana in the archipelago nation. Later arrested for smoking weed onstage, Kaya was found dead in his jail cell within a few days. This ignited widespread protests and violence across the ethnically diverse country, which had long simmered under poverty and inequality, especially among the islands' Creole inhabitants. This highly charged backdrop serves as the point of departure for de Souza's frenetic novel, which follows Santee as she searches for her brother, Ram, who goes missing in the riotous aftermath. Santee's quest barely begins before she escapes an attempted assault at the Négus, a popping nightclub, which then burns to the ground before her eyes. After a rambling ride with a taxi cab driver, Santee meets a young man, whom she incorrectly calls Ronaldo Milanac when she mistakes his tattoo of the famous footballer's name for his own. Santee continues her search, and de Souza's incessantly swift prose translates the racial and religious kaleidoscope of the Mauritian experience into a deceptively compact novel. Also noteworthy are the faithful incorporation of Francophone Creole and moments of unexpected wonderment, as when rambunctious monkeys interrupt Santee and Ronaldo's Bollywood dance number. Long overlooked in the United States, de Souza and his compatriots deserve to be celebrated stateside. An electrifying portrait of a tiny island nation on fire. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The night before, he had been with his friends, everything had been going swimmingly, they had been raiding a gas station, had knocked over no less than six cars and to top it off, out by Chebel, they'd tackled a bus and the police hadn't been able to move its burnt carcass until around midnight. He was helpless as he watched her pry off her shoes and walk barefoot on the cobblestones. The coolness soothed her and she slowed her pace: there was no rush anymore. If you don't want to, that's okay, she said. He looked around. The women were going right past them, talking loudly, the oldest one was scolding the others for having rushed, for not having taken the time to pick and choose. The others were laughing under their breath and pushing the cart this way and that. It was sagging with frozen foods, chickens, and cuts of beef dripping a trail along the ground. If they followed this blood-tinged trace, would they reach some source of plenty? He hardly seemed to need this lead. She let him take her hand this time and, together, they crossed Royal Road. He led her straight to the Arcades. Other people were coming out, jangling and clattering their carts as well, but rather than go right into the crowd in front of the grocery store, the guy turned off toward the clothes shops. Here, everything was still calm, and a subdued light bathed the fashion shop's slender mannequins and bouquets of dried flowers. Santee rushed over to look. Multicolored tee-shirts hung off a dead tree and on a stretch of sawdust standing in for a beach, as if they had washed in with the tide, were pink and green and yellow shoes and pumps, sunglasses. In the background was the frozen burble of an emerald sea. Excerpted from Kaya Days by Carl de Souza All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.