Eve Out of Her Ruins

Starred review from October 17, 2016
Behind the resort hotels and carefully manicured beaches of the Mauritanian capital is Troumaron, a world of poverty and violence where the four narrators in this spare and heartbreaking novel share the hopelessness of being unable to escape the bleakness of the future that awaits them. Eve learned at a young age to use her body as currency, and now she pays for tutoring lessons by having sex with her teacher in a small biology classroom, determined to learn her way out of Troumaron. The tragedy that soon unravels involves Savita, Eve's closest friend, who seems determined to save Eve from herself; Saadiq, a young man torn between gang life and the poetry he secretly writes on his bedroom wall, mostly about Eve; and gang member Clélio, rebellious and impulsive, bent on violence and destruction as he waits in despair for his brother to make it possible for Clélio to join him in France. The power of this haunting story is its universality; the stark contrast between the pleasures of the rich and the struggles of the poor has been explored previously, but Devi breathes new life into a familiar conflict by offering four interwoven perspectives, with each narrator affected differently and tragically by the impossibility of changing their circumstances. The beauty of Devi's prose belies the horror of the world she conjures up. This is a visceral portrait of violence rendered honestly and gracefully.