De Souza's prose, which includes significant amounts of Kreol in addition to French, mirrors his protagonist's transformation: his sentences, in Jeffrey Zuckerman's excellent, language-mixing translation, are compelling at the book's start, but become downright hypnotic by its end. Kaya Days is a novella designed to be read in one gulp, and Jeffrey Zuckerman’s prose is propulsive enough to make the book nearly impossible to put down.” —NPR
“The rhythm of revolution beats through every sentence of this dazzling novel. In Jeffrey Zuckerman’s shimmering translation, the history and cultures of Mauritius form the background, and its sounds and smells the fore, of a rich portrait of a nation in a moment of change. —Noah Mintz, Literary Hub
“A work that renders the electric immediacy of sensation with vividness, kinetics, and a musician’s aptness for rhythm…De Souza’s densely packed novel is a disorienting one, purposefully so. He jars his readers again and again through sudden shifts in character narration, transmogrifying objects and people, and juxtapositions of violence and jubilation.” —Laurel Taylor, Asymptote
“Electric…De Souza’s unpredictable, propulsive tale is a rip-roaring trip teeming with beauty, anger, possibility, and helplessness.” —Publishers Weekly
“An electrifying portrait of a tiny island nation on fire.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A frantic, stream-of-consciousness novel in which a teenager comes of age in the middle of violent upheaval.” —Foreword Reviews
“De Souza gives us a superb portrait of a town in riot…a mythical journey through a sort of hell.” —The Modern Novel
"I read Kaya Days in a single setting—in between and on flights—and found it to be dreamlike and evocative, a dramatic, rich and potent contribution to the thankfully multiplying literature from and of our oceanic realms. It was such a delightful companion." —Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, author of The Dragonfly Sea
“A searing, urgent, far-seeing dispatch that imprints the reality of Mauritius, at odds with its picture-postcard views, on the global consciousness. Carl de Souza is a formidable voice in Mauritian literature; his account is an indictment and a plea for understanding among its communities.” —J.M.G. Le Clézio, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
"Kaya Days strives to recreate not so much a reality as a truth... [Carl de Souza's] fluid yet dense prose conveys, with flecks of poetry, an extraordinary journey of the soul set, over the course of Kaya Days, against a backdrop of upheaval. His characters live through these events and remain themselves, even as they endure the aftershocks of riotous violence. His novel, which has to be read again and again to fully comprehend its scope, is a rock thrown into seemingly calm waters that will make waves for a long time after."—Le Soir (Belgium)
"Even more than [Mauritius's] ethnic tensions, which he delineates meticulously, Carl de Souza trains his gaze on the humanity of these beings abandoned by all and guides us deep into a world with no limits left." —L'Express (Mauritius)
"Through the lens of femininity and childhood, the story delves in an unprecedented manner into the themes of innocence and cruelty. The striking prose interweaves a frenetic style and a rising, almost-shrill rhythm in a dreamy way. The achingly personal relationships of these stupefying days reveal a deep-rooted perspective of the island's history." —L'Humanité (France)
"[Kaya Days] lays bare clashes of communities, brutalities and kindnesses across generations, pleasures and escapes through Carl de Souza's attentive, vivid prose." —Libération (France)
2021-07-14
A much-anticipated novel in translation from a Mauritian maestro.
In 1999, Kaya, a Mauritian musician and activist, performed at a public concert to advocate for the legalization of marijuana in the archipelago nation. Later arrested for smoking weed onstage, Kaya was found dead in his jail cell within a few days. This ignited widespread protests and violence across the ethnically diverse country, which had long simmered under poverty and inequality, especially among the islands' Creole inhabitants. This highly charged backdrop serves as the point of departure for de Souza's frenetic novel, which follows Santee as she searches for her brother, Ram, who goes missing in the riotous aftermath. Santee's quest barely begins before she escapes an attempted assault at the Négus, a popping nightclub, which then burns to the ground before her eyes. After a rambling ride with a taxi cab driver, Santee meets a young man, whom she incorrectly calls Ronaldo Milanac when she mistakes his tattoo of the famous footballer's name for his own. Santee continues her search, and de Souza's incessantly swift prose translates the racial and religious kaleidoscope of the Mauritian experience into a deceptively compact novel. Also noteworthy are the faithful incorporation of Francophone Creole and moments of unexpected wonderment, as when rambunctious monkeys interrupt Santee and Ronaldo's Bollywood dance number. Long overlooked in the United States, de Souza and his compatriots deserve to be celebrated stateside.
An electrifying portrait of a tiny island nation on fire.
