Silence of the Chagos, Paperback

Every afternoon a woman in a red headscarf walks to the end of the quay and looks out over the water, fixing her gaze "back there" to Diego Garcia, one of the small islands forming the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean. With no explanation, no forewarning, and only an hour to pack their belongings, the Chagossians are deported to Mauritius. Officials tell her that the island is "closed"-- there is no going back for any of them. Charlesia longs for life on Diego Garcia, where the days were spent working on a coconut plantation; the nights dancing to sega music. As she struggles to come to terms with her life on Mauritius, Charlesia crosses paths with D sir , a young man born on the one-way journey to Mauritius. D sir has never set foot on Diego Garcia, but as Charlesia unfolds the dramatic story of his people, he learns of the home he never knew and the disrupted future of his people.

With the sovereignty of Chagos currently being debated on an international judiciary level, Silence of the Chagos is an important and timely examination of the rights of individuals in the face of governmental corruption.

About the Author:
Shenaz Patel is a journalist and writer from the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean. She has been a Reuter fellow, worked as editor in chief of a political newspaper, before setting up of the arts, culture and society section of one of Mauritius' biggest weekly where she still works as a columnist. Patel has published four novels, numerous short stories in French and Mauritian Creole, two plays, three graphic novels, and four children's books. She was an IWP (International Writers Program) Honorary Fellow in the U.S. in 2016, and was a fellow at the Hutchins Centre-W.E.B du Bois Institute at Harvard University in 2018.

About the Translator:
Jeffrey Zuckerman is an award-winning translator from French of titles ranging from Jean Genet's The Criminal Child to Ananda Devi's Eve Out of Her Ruins.