An Impossible Return by Caroline Laurent

First published in France in 2020; published in translation by Amazon Crossing on December 1, 2022

An Impossible Return takes place during one of the historical tragedies that most of us never hear about because it happened to someone else, to some other people in some other land. Mauritius is an island nation in the Indian Ocean. It was under French control for a hundred years before it became a British colony. The people of Mauritius gained their independence in 1968, but the British, the US, and the new political leader of Mauritius cut a secret deal to split off the Chagos Archipelago, which became a British territory. The island of Diego Garcia was leased to the US for a naval base, a land grab justified by the “war on terror.” The lease required all Chagossians to be expelled before the base was constructed.

In an afterword, Caroline Laurent explains that she learned about the ordeal endured by Chagossians from her Mauritian mother. Laurent’s novel tells the story by creating a protagonist who, despite poverty and the absence of a formal education, fights back against injustice. The protagonist’s son brings the story forward, into the recent past, with intermittent commentary on a legal proceeding before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

The protagonist, Marie-Pierre Ladouceur, lives on Diego Garcia. She shares herself with two lovers as the mood strikes her. She has a daughter named Suzanne and doesn’t know which lover is the father. When a handsome young man named Gabriel Neymorin arrives on the island, Marie aggressively takes his virginity. Gabriel is enthused to discover the new sport of sex, although his petulant refusal to dance with Marie at a wedding motivates her to shag one of her former lovers. Marie greets her pregnancy with the hope that Gabriel is the father, but the baby does not have his fair skin or European features. Gabriel nevertheless assumes that Joséphin is his son and loves him as a father should.

Gabriel grew up in Mauritius with a brother and sister. His father sent him to the Chagos to work as the secretary for Marcel Mollinart, the colonial administrator. The assignment shattered Gabriel’s hope of studying in London, a dream that his more favored brother was allowed to pursue. Some of the story involves a family drama as the siblings become distant from each other and from their racist father. Another family drama occurs when Gabriel comes to suspect that he is not the biological father of Joséphin.

History begins to take center stage when Gabriel learns of the plan to evacuate Diego Garcia. The plan calls for volunteers to leave first (without telling them that they can’t return), followed by cutting off supply shipments to the Chagos, with the eventual forced evacuation of diehards who remain. Gabriel is sworn to secrecy by the British government and blackmailed by Mollinart to hide the truth from Marie. Gabriel’s dilemma leads to an even deeper schism in his relationship with Marie and Joséphin, particularly after Marie learns that Gabriel lied about the fate of her sister, who took a trip to Mauritius to buy supplies and failed to return as Marie expected.

The novel’s most moving scenes follow the upended lives of Chagossians who are cut off from supplies and later evacuated at gunpoint. The evacuation scene is horrifying, particularly for dog lovers. Marie and Gabriel are separated in the confusion, just as other families are torn apart. Travel to Mauritius in the hold of a ship (reminiscent of slave ships) is harrowing, as is life for Chagossians in a Mauritian slum that is torn apart by a cyclone with no support from the governments of the UK or Mauritius.

Racism explains why the British and Americans felt entitled to force black island residents to abandon their land, property, and culture, to endanger their lives, to separate family members, and to provide them with no support on Mauritius. Laurent illustrates racist attitudes in other ways: Mollinart’s wife can’t believe that he feels sympathy for black people; Gabriel’s father berates his sister for befriending an Indian girl on Mauritius.

Some plot elements could be the stuff of melodrama (the uncertainty of Joséphin’s paternity, the abusive relationship to which Marie’s sister clings, Gabriel's awareness of his father's abuse of a servant, an unexpected death), but even the most dramatic moments in the story of Marie and Gabriel are understated. Their story primarily exists as a frame for the larger story of Chagossians who were uprooted and forced to wait decades for the opportunity to return to their homeland. Marie becomes an unlikely spokeswoman, something of a media celebrity, in her efforts to force the UK to acknowledge its wrongdoing. The British try to take advantage of the Chagossians with an illusory settlement before they are forced to answer for their colonial sins. The larger historical context produces a stirring story that resonates with the kind of truth that refuses to be silenced.

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