The Rape of Sita
SynopsisPlot
Through the intersecting frames of Indian, African, and European cultures that make up the tiny African island nation of Mauritius emerges Sitaa living legend in her country and activist in the national struggle for independence. She is also a strong woman who has buried a secret that threatens to overwhelm her. As Sita makes terrifying plunges into the black hole of her fragmented memory, her painful and angry search to come to terms with her past extends beyond her own violation. Echoing ancient folk tales and religious prophecies, Sita's modern-day struggle to remember her own history and rape comes to symbolize all rapes, all violations, and all colonizations.
Story
About this book
Lindsey Collen's novel is set in Mauritius, an island nation shaped by overlapping Indian, African, and European cultural layers. At its center is Sita, an activist figure and a well-known presence in Mauritian society, who carries a buried secret about her own past. The story is narrated by a character called Iqbal the Umpire, whose voice draws on ancient myths, folk tales, and religious prophecy to frame events set in the 1980s.
Sita's attempt to recover suppressed memory forms the core of the book. Her fragmented recollections surface in painful stages as she tries to confront what happened to her. Collen connects Sita's personal experience to wider patterns of violation and colonial power, linking one woman's hidden history to the broader circumstances of a small postcolonial country still working through its own past.
The novel was banned in Mauritius when it was first published, partly because of its title's reference to a figure from Hindu epic tradition. According to the supplied record, it went on to win the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book in Africa. Collen's approach is structurally unconventional, filtering a contemporary story through layers of older narrative forms.
