Ananda Devi

Ananda Devi is a Mauritian novelist and poet born in 1957 in Trois-Boutiques, Mauritius. She is the most celebrated Mauritian writer in any language and one of the most important voices in contemporary Francophone literature. She writes in French, having grown up in a multilingual Mauritian environment. She has lived in Geneva, London, and Paris. Devi is the author of more than a dozen novels and short story collections, beginning with Rue la Poudrière (1988). Her major works include Moi, l'interdite (2000), Pagli (2001), Les Hommes qui me parlent (2011), Ève de ses décombres (Eve Out of Her Ruins, 2006, Prix du Roman Métis), and Manger l'autre (2018). Her fiction is known for its lyrical intensity, its frank engagement with the female body and female violence, and its engagement with the colonial and post-colonial history of the Indian Ocean. She received the Neustadt Prize in 2024, the first Mauritian writer to be so recognized. The prize honored a body of work that has consistently given voice to the marginalized, the violated, and the silenced, particularly women in post-colonial societies. Devi is regarded as one of the most important Francophone writers of her generation, bringing the Indian Ocean world into the center of world literary culture.