As the title suggests, the novel’s focus is on the eponymous archipelago that was ceded by the British to the USA as a military base, meaning the Chagos islanders who lived there were forcibly deported, destined to roam the world as they sought to make the case for being permitted to return to their islands. One of the co-authors, Natasha Soobramanien, is of Mauritian descent, which helps to explain her interest in the islanders’ fate, as their first port of call after being deported was Mauritius, where a strong community of Chagos islanders remains. Others have moved to the UK, specifically Crawley, a consequence of the stateless islanders arriving at Gatwick when they first came to Britain. A select cohort of the islanders have been granted UK citizenship, but others haven’t and their fate, as is the fate of so many stateless individuals, is to roam the world in limbo. One of these, called Diego, is a character in the novel, albeit a peripheral figure, as the novel on the whole revolves around the relationship between Damaris and Oliver, which appear to be nommes des plumes for the writers themselves. This auto-fiction is the dominant strand of the book, as it traces the relationship between the two writers, who are also writing this novel we are reading together. The novel thus becomes a somewhat solipsistic project, albeit very Fitzcarraldo. It comes as no great surprise to discover that Soobramanien is an alumni of the UEA Creative Writing MA, which in turn has been so influenced by the work of Sebald. Whilst the novel incorporates segments which are memoirs of other characters, figures in the story of Diego Garcia, there is perhaps a sense that it is slightly less radical than it purports to be and the interweaving of the novelists’ stories with that of the Chagos islanders has moments which feel somewhat tenuous.
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