by Ananda Devi
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Nov 2019
174 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A chance encounter on Portobello Road incites an unsettling, magnetic attraction between Mary, a seventy-five-year-old white British spinster, and Cub, a thirteen-year-old Jamaican boy from Brixton.
Mary clings increasingly to phantoms as dementia overtakes her reality, latching on to Cub and channeling her remaining energy into their relationship. But their macabre romance comes to a horrific climax, as white supremacy, poverty, and class conflict explode on the streets of London.
Through exquisite juxtaposition, Ananda Devi uses alluring prose to confront the tensions of an increasingly nationalistic metropolis, and to examine the queasy nature of desire muddled with power.
"Like the best narratives that use fantastic tropes, this one defies being reduced to one simple set of meanings, but it's fair to say that the novel uses the lens of post-colonialism to test the promises of cosmopolitanism and liberalism...A gorgeously written, profoundly upsetting fairy tale of race, class, power, and desire. - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[B]rutal and entirely believable, a gorgeous and haunting depiction of London and the real lives and memories of those unseen within it. - Publishers Weekly
"Devi maintains a careful balancing act to ensure that our protagonists provoke some degree of empathy and provide an engaging read." - Asymptote
"A fierce portrait of our times...Sensual and provocative writing, woven of dreams and nightmares, which slowly closes round the reader and holds them in its grasp." - Le Monde des Livres
"Beautifully written, visceral, and ecstatic. Unafraid, as angels might be, to bear witness to the force of entropy pulling us all toward death." - Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young
This information about The Living Days was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ananda Devi was born in 1957 in Mauritius, noted for its confluence of diverse ethnic, cultural and linguistic identities. Devi won her first literary prize at the age of fifteen for a short story in a Radio France Internationale competition. After a few years spent in Congo-Brazzaville, Devi moved to Ferney-Voltaire in Switzerland in 1989, where she lives today. She has published twelve novels, as well as short stories and poetry, and was featured at the PEN World Voices Festival in New York in 2015. Her literary awards include the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie (2006) and Prix Télévision Suisse Romande (2007) for Ève de ses décombres, as well as the Prix Louis-Guilloux (2010) and the Prix Mokanda (2012) for other works. In 2010 Devi was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government and in 2014 she was awarded the Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises by the Académie Française. Her latest novel, Manger l'autre (2018) won the Prix Étonnants Voyageurs.
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